Guitar Hero 2, Eurovision, and Wikipedia: rediscovering Freezepop

Some time after I moved out of the house for college (etc.), my younger siblings pooled some money to buy a used PlayStation 2 and a few games, including Guitar Hero 2. When I was home for summers and breaks, I got some exposure to new-to-me music through playing that game with them. As a huge fan of Homestar Runner, I naturally appreciated the appreciation of Trogdor, but one of the songs that stuck out most to me was Freezepop’s less talk more rokk:

I loved the sound of this song, and In the years following my discovery, I would occasionally find it on YouTube or elsewhere to give it a listen. At some point, though, the song completely disappeared from my radar. I honestly don’t know if it was a prudish disapproval of the word “kick-ass,” a growing interest in other music, or maybe the busyness of grad school life, but as recently as 24 hours ago, I couldn’t remember the names “Freezepop” or “less talk more rokk"—just that there was a synthpop band out there whose sound I’d briefly fallen in love with only for it to largely disappear from my memory.

What got me trying to remember the band was last weekend’s Eurovision Song Contest. Spain’s entry, Nebulossa’s Zorra, has a similar sound (some of the live performances also feature keytars like the ones in less talk more rokk’s music video). As the Greenhalgh family has been listening to Eurovision entries on repeat since Saturday, I’ve been remembering how much I liked synthpop and, eventually, feeling like there was some song that it reminded me of.

Anyway, this morning, I decided that it was time to figure out what this mysterious band out at the edges of my memory was. I’ve implied up to this point that I knew that it was a synthpop act, but to be honest, I didn’t even have that word available to me. I’m not terribly music literate, and that’s especially apparent when it comes to describing genres! I just knew that Nebulossa’s sound reminded me of a band that I’d used to occasionally listen to. So, I turned to Wikipedia to save the day. Looking up the article for Zorra gave me the word synthpop, and a couple of link hops later, I had a “List of synth-pop artists” that I committed to scrolling through until I saw something familiar.

I found a few familiar names (I like a-ha and Devo just fine, but I don’t think of them as having the same sound as Freezepop or Nebulossa) and some names I hadn’t heard but was intrigued by (Dalek I Love You seems like a bold choice for a band’s name, but one that’s paying off in terms of catching my attention), but as soon as I saw Freezepop, I knew it was what I’d been looking for.

It’s hard to say what this rediscovery will turn into in the long term. Maybe I’ll purchase an album, maybe I’ll just listen to less talk more rokk a few times this week, maybe I’ll purchase Zorra instead, or maybe both will fade back to the outer reaches of my memory for another decade or so. Whatever happens, though, I’m very pleased at the sequence of events that brought me back here.

• macro
• Myself
• Freezepop
• Eurovision
• Eurovision 2024
• video games
• Wikipedia
• synthpop
• Homestar Runner
• music