Actually, if you go to your local McDonalds restaurant, you can get your own Perpetual Motion Bear™ with your Happy Meal! When you spin the gear, it will keep spinning forever - its motion will literally outlive the heat death of the universe. It's terrifying, frankly.

Well, kinda - I certainly took some creative liberties. I'm pretty sure that the original story (the one that happened in real life), it wasn't actually the inventor's daughter who powered it from inside, it was just his servant. I changed it to his daughter so I could write a more nuanced exploration of the the character and goals I was projecting onto the inventor. Anyway, I cannot for the life of me remember the names of anyone involved, and without a proper bibliography, it's probably wisest to treat the song as a nice fictional story about existential dread.

It's a cluster of C, D and E in the left hand, and a G#, A#, C# and D# in the right. For our purposes, it's a rather spicy C. But I usually just call it The Big Dominant Chord.

Well, the bass says E, so it's E with some extra symbols of them fancy piano and guitar players ;)

That's easy: just cut down on your mental breakdowns, existential crises etc.. Research shows that 80% of shower time is spent dwelling on regrets and anxieties, so becoming more balanced and well-adjusted person is an easy way to reduce your carbon footprint.

We are totally unqualified to give answers to such questions. Please consult people with more expertise, we just like making songs about it.

The song started as an instrumental, with Thomas and me jamming at his home. We attempted to find a simple but heavy punk inspired vibe. The bass notes came to us, and we were sure we wanted to use them for a song, which formed around it.

I think at the time I was a little obsessed with the blues and rock'n'roll, and figuring out new ways to make its structure bend to my own will. I was looking for something spicy to make it distinct from the chord progression that we all know and love.

Meanwhile, I had a Queens of the Stone Age-like thing in my head, so that's how we ended up with the progression from the second to third chord.

I think the first lines were written when it felt like our Covid-19 guidelines were decided by politicians blindly throwing darts at the WHO's advices. I ended up tuning out and deciding to stop questioning it because didn't want to expend the mental energy on it.

Look, I get you, but I don't think it's about that anymore. Now it's more about the man who claims to be completely neutral and apolitical, but then reveals that he does actually have some serious and deeply rooted beliefs about the world, as we all do. And beyond that, the issues on which you decide to take no stance can reveal a lot about you as a person.

Okay, you got me there. But hey, at least it's some kind of meta-commentary about how one engages with politics, rather than Current Events: The Song. Just be glad I haven't written my magnum opus Rutte Vijfentwintig yet. (Set to the tune of Vamos a la Playa/Hamburgers Met Korting.)

That was added as a quick throwaway joke because I wasn't sure of the lyrics for that part yet. It was always going to be a temporary line, but if there's enough demand for it, it might make a return during some live performances.