Mahanth Joishy is Editor

MUSIC, DESTINY, AND ALGORITHMS.

Every music enthusiast probably experiences at some point the frustration of trying to find an elusive, beautiful song they heard just once, say, on the radio or at a party. This happened to me and I immediately fell in love with a song without the slightest idea who the artist or title were in order to listen again. The one glimmer of hope that keeps you going if years pass by without any progress on this desperate shot in the dark is an unwavering faith you’d immediately recognize the song if ever stumbling upon it again.

A song struck me just so and became somewhat of a periodic ear worm for years while the unfruitful quest to identify the damn song remained an unsolved mystery. I first heard the heavy metal jam on the car radio while driving in 2019. Unfortunately I only caught the tail end of the head banger with broken bits of lyrics because the punishing instrumentals drowned out the singer or singers on the crappy old car stereo. Those vocals, guitar, bass and drums felt different; they were unexpectedly passionate and even magical.

There was no way to be sure if I even registered those little snippets of the lyrics correctly in my brain. Memory can play tricks. The words were not exactly the best clues, even with the Internet providing easy access to every commercial rock song lyric ever written by human- or increasingly, computer. All I had to go on was what I thought I heard that day:

If I could walk, walk to the end of the world…

If I could run, run to the end of the world…

If I could fly, I’d fly to the end of the world…

This and dozens of other unintelligible lines were folded into a high-pitched, melodic male American voice intermittently interrupted by his own passionate screaming and thundering guitar, bass and drums. I was hooked in seconds and desired to listen to this song and this band some more. This was my kind of music, though unfortunately it was totally obscure to me. To hear it ever again would require tracking it down first.

I didn’t give up easily, expending more time and effort than I care to admit brainlessly surfing the web trying to rediscover the song with those few words as my only bad clues. It wasn’t the type of music anyone I knew would know. My search would end up a complete fail. There’s only so many times you can earnestly input strings of phrases with a word salad of permutations into search engines with no dice before you begin accepting the possibility of never hearing the sweet tune ever again.

2025 came around, and the universe catapulted the track back into my world straight out of the blue 6 years later through no effort on my part. How appropriate, since the first and only previous time I heard it was equally unexpected and random. While in a hospital room the YouTube Music algorithm was auto-playing a heavy metal mix playlist on my laptop, most of which was unfamiliar from around the turn of the century, based on past listening habits and song likes. Then out of nowhere the first notes of Rope pleasantly attacked my eardrums through the headphones, and I instantly knew I had finally reconnected with an old, long-lost friend. It was an emotional moment.

Rope was released by 40 Below Summer back in 2002. I first heard it in 2019 and for the second time in 2025 through destiny, artificial intelligence, dogged manifestation, or all of the above depending on how you perceive reality and consciousness. Regardless, I’m highly grateful. The fact is YouTube Music correctly guessed what I wanted to hear more than any other song in the universe and delivered. Somehow Rope reappeared at the precise time and place I most needed to hear it, most needed to head bang during a challenging time. Rope has become one of my anthems of 2025 as I’ve listened to it a hundred times and counting in the last two months after zero listens and ear worms for 6 years.

People say that Google knows you better than you know yourself. That’s pretty creepy. In this case, I’m OK with whatever invasion of my privacy was necessary. Thanks to big tech, Rope is also available below if you dare listen. Just make sure to crank it up all the way to appreciate the experience, especially Max’s unique voice.