Some songs are about after you’ve made the wrong decision. Some songs are about while you’re making the wrong decision. “Can’t get you out of my mind” by Michellar falls clearly into the latter category.
“Can’t get you out of my mind” isn’t a song about healthy emotional boundaries. It isn’t a song about moving on. It isn’t a song about taking a deep breath, having a think about your feelings and then emerging a stronger, more mature person.
The whole track is bathed in a thick, psych-haze so the song itself immediately feels otherworldly and distant as your consciousness is pulled along by a sense of things not quite making sense; the guitars shift in and out of focus, the whole production swirls round itself and everything has a slightly “off” feel to it, like the sonic equivalent of staring at the ceiling at two in the morning while going over exactly what was said in a conversation that has long past and could very easily be dismissed from thought.
There’s nothing poetic or glamorous to Michellar’s take on this tune, just something weird and all-consuming. It sounds as though the song has gotten stuck in a The King of Limbs-adjacent loop and it will continue to play around a central thought it can’t move on from in whatever context it happens to find itself. This feeling permeates everything to be found within the song itself, with the tunes always circling back on themselves, the psychedelic sounds blurring the line between reality and fantasy, and the pace of the tune deliberately languid and remind me somewhat of what Flaming Lips have done over the years.
Apparently Michellar went through many arrangers for this song before it got to its final sound but you wouldn’t ever know it by just sitting back and having a listen. No parts of it ever feel forced. The vibe isn’t something the artist has thrown on like an outfit to make sure everyone knows what we’re getting up to but instead it’s something that feels baked into the song from its very conception, as though the melody itself demands to exist in such a hazy, confusing, colorful world.
Michellar talks about the creative process, telling the listener ‘Curiosity kills the cat. I think we both killed it on this song’. It may just be the most honest sum-up of the track possible as the whole damn thing just reeks of curiosity, the type of it that keeps picking at loose threads.
As the first release from Michellar’s planned spring 2027 psych-opus, this single lays out just what to expect: immersive, slightly disturbing and entirely committed to its own artistic vision.
“Can’t get you out of my mind” is a song about an inability to truly move on from certain thoughts even when it’s patently obvious that they are getting no good of it any more. We lose our minds sometimes. We lose ourselves. This song seems utterly happy to remain where it’s gotten itself to.
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About the Author
A tenured media critic known working as a ghost writer, freelance critic for publications in the US and former lead writer of Atop The Treehouse. Reviews music, film and TV shows for media aggregators.
