"When It's Cold I'd Like to Die" by Moby ft. Mimi Goese - The Music of Stranger Things

0:21 Hey y'all, and welcome back to Camp Nowhere, a Stranger Things podcast. My name is Lauren. My name is Joel and we are so thankful you are here to listen to us process all things Stranger Things. For sure, we plan to launch into a miniseries we are calling The Music of Stranger Things, where for the next several episodes we'll be taking a deep dive into some key songs that are featured in the show. For this episode, since it's been pretty chilly here in Louisville, KY, we are focusing on the song When It's Cold, I'd Like to Die by Moby.

1:00 Yes, and when we say deep dive, what we mean is a thorough song analysis, like sharing lots of research we've done about the song itself, why it's written, as well as looking into the specific moments that the song is used throughout the TV series. Exactly why was it chosen for those specific moments? What kinds of emotional implications does it have in resonating with its audience, and how does it either affect or advance the overall plot of the show? Ergo, once again, spoiler alert, if you haven't yet watched Stranger Things in its entirety so seasons one through 5, be warned.

1:44 We are definitely going to be discussing spoilers in this episode and most likely all future episodes. Yeah. Yes, please go watch the show first. I personally hate spoilers with a passion. Joel hate spoilers. I will not be able to sleep tonight if I have even an even an inkling that we may have spoiled something from the series for you. So with that out of the way, for the first segment here, we'll discuss who wrote it, when they wrote it, and what was the like historical context and personal context of him writing that.

2:28 So Lauren, I know that you did some research, some scrounging around to see what you could come up with. Don't worry, I got you. So as we mentioned earlier, this song is by an artist called Moby, which is the nickname for American electronic musician, DJ and producer Richard Melville Hall, and it features vocals from Mimi Gazy of the band Hugo Largo. Richard was born on September 11th, 1965 5 in New York City. Rolling Stone did a feature article on him and they wrote this. Moby was born Richard Melville Hall in Harlem, where his parents, Jane and Elizabeth, lived in a basement apartment with a menagerie of pets, including three laboratory rats.

3:19 They nicknamed their son in honor of Herman Melville, his great, great, great uncle, and happens to be the author of Moby Dick. When James, a graduate student at Columbia University, died in a car crash in 1967, Elizabeth moved with two year old Moby to Connecticut. It was there, not Harlem, that Moby discovered the transformative might of black church song. He was living on his own in the late 1980s in an abandoned and in factory in a crack ravaged area of Stamford. But there were a lot of storefront churches, Moby says, in the crappiest buildings with these hand painted signs.

3:59 I would wake up on a Sunday morning, walk through my neighborhood and hear these amazing choirs. I was too afraid to go in, but I would spend a long time outside listening. Around then Moby, a former philosophy student at the University of Connecticut. He dropped out after a year, became a devout Christian, or as he puts it, a militant Christian dance music enthusiast. Upon researching even further, I came to discover that he doesn't actually claim to be a Christian. He doesn't like that label, but he appreciates the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament, and he seeks God in prayer.

4:38 He started out primarily in punk music and then became an electronic music pioneer known for techno, ambient, incorporating field recordings. And this song from the album entitled Everything Is Wrong came out in 1995, just like I did.

5:00 That that's one way to put it. Laugh. Just here to bless. Anyway, I found a YouTube video from Moby that he shared recently on January 7th. Maybe he wanted to cheer up us fans who never got our secret bonus episode for season 5. You know, conformity gate theory, but this video is called the story behind When It's Cold, I'd Like to Die. We'll only play a portion of the video here, but we definitely encourage you to check it out in its entirety. We'll make sure to link it in the description portion of our episode on Spotify.

5:40 And so it was pushed sort of towards the end of the record, like it seemed like a nice quiet wind down as the record was was coming to its end. And it was largely ignored as far as I could tell. But then people started discovering it. The first person I knew who discovered it was my friend Dean, who made the movies Lilo and Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon. And he said his favorite song of mine was When It's Cold, I'd Like to Die. And I was like, how? How did you hear this? No one heard that song, and he said he'd even written an entire screenplay inspired by When It's Cold.

6:18 I'd Like to Die. Hopefully he'll turn it into a movie someday. And then a few years after that, it got used in the show The Sopranos. And I just kept wondering, like, how are people hearing this song? Because it was never a single. There were no drums. It's an obscure song at the end of an obscure album. And then it got really, really strange in a good way, when it got used in the first season of Stranger Things. And I was watching Stranger Things and I didn't know they were going to be using it.

6:51 And all of a sudden I heard When It's Cold I'd Like to Die in this very intense scene. And I was just amazed one because again, I was surprised. Anyone had heard this song? But also all of the other music and Stranger Things was from the 80s. When It's Cold I'd Like to Die is from the mid 90s. And I felt so honored that the Duffer Brothers included me with all these iconic old new wave tracks from the 80s and I thought great. It's been the first season of Stranger Things. A few more people have heard it.

7:25 What an amazing life this song has had. And then the most recent season of Stranger Things, it got used almost in its entirety in one of the most emotional scenes in the entire series, and it exploded. All of a sudden, people around the world started discovering this obscure song. And as I'm talking to you right now, it's now my most streamed song on Spotify, which to me is so strange considering not to date myself too much, but it's 30 years old. And it was an obscure, very sort of like, melodic, pretty heartbreaking piece of music at the end of an obscure record.

8:10 And I just am so surprised anyone ever listened to it. And it's just amazing that 30 years later, it's gone from being quiet and weird and obscure and heartbreaking to being the most successful song that I have.

8:31 What's striking to me about it is that Moby didn't actually know that the song was going to be in Stranger Things. That's crazy. It's wild. Like, Can you imagine watching ATV series as popular as Stranger Things and finding out that the creators of the show chose to use your song during one of the most like emotional scenes in the show? Yeah, and quick clarification that he mentions in the video is when he says that it showed up later in the most recent season of a really emotional scene, he's talking about some scenes in season 4.

9:08 Just so you all know, we won't share it here, but go watch Stranger Things and and watch it for yourself. So maybe he made the video prior to his own viewing of season 5, but yeah, that would be so humbling. Truly an honor to find that your song was chosen for an incredible franchise like Stranger Things, especially when you piece together the fact that the Duffer's almost exclusively chose songs that were already released during the time the show was set in. So for Season 1, almost every song that's used in the show would have been a song that was released in 1983 or prior.

9:48 But they must have really just loved When It's Cold I'd Like to Die so much that they chose to utilize it multiple times throughout the series even though it didn't release until 1995. Right, Yeah. And you alluded to the fact that the song was used multiple times, like throughout the series. So then let's talk about it. Like, let's discuss which particular seasons, which episodes, which scenes where the song plays and yeah, and go from there. Yeah, so it's first used in Season 1, Episode 8, which was the finale season or episode the Upside Down during this intense scene where Joyce and Hopper are trying to revive Will by performing CPR.

10:41 And again in Season 4, Episode 9, which is entitled The Piggyback for the devastating parallel scene of Eddie Munson's death, as well as Max, quote, UN quote, dying. We think she's dying and Lucas's arms. And then third and final time it's used is in Season 5 Episode 7 entitled The Bridge and the Cold Open when Max finally awakens from her coma to see Lucas and her friends around her. And an observation here, the song like the when it's first used with Joyce and Hopper, they're in the Upside Down.

11:22 They finally find Will and that's like a near death moment because we don't really know what's happening. We don't know what the tube is. We don't know how long that that's been down his throat like. And yeah, and so that's like, first the song is used in a near death sort of way, and then the second time that it's used, so it's not used for seasons two or three. And then we get to season 4 and it's used for actual death. And then. But then what's interesting is that it's used a final time, but it's not for death.

11:58 It's actually for like a hopeful, like happy moment where we see that Max actually escaped death. Like she awakes from her coma and she gets to be reunited to Lucas and her friends. Right, she's been trapped in this time loop for almost 2 years, trying over and over and over to be reunited to her physical body and, and over time and time again, she wasn't able to do that. And so there's this beautiful moment where it finally worked. She finally escaped. Her friends are just weeping as she is reunited with her physical body.

12:37 And I wonder if that goes to show that maybe, maybe they didn't want the song to only be predictably tied to death, but to only use it and, and then we know hope someone's going to die. It's very compelling that they also use the song in moments like you mentioned, filled with hope, with peace, with relief and comfort. It goes to show that the song itself isn't only about dying. It's about feelings of loneliness, yearning for connection, despair, emotional numbness, you might say this longing for peace and respirate from the inevitable struggles of life.

13:18 The the line I really like when it's cold, I'd like to die. It can be interpreted as this desire for emotional pain to stop when warmth and connection seem absent, rather than a literal wish for death. So Joel, I'm kind of curious, what do you remember about what was going on in your heart and mind, like what emotion you were experiencing the first time that you heard the song he used in Stranger Things So season 1? It's season 1, it's the finale, Joyce and Hopper finally find Will. Man, Season 1 just holds a special place in my heart because I think that people talk often talk about how they really like seasons 3 and 4, which is valid.

14:06 It's valid. But Season 1 is so special because you don't know anything. Like you don't, you don't know what are Demogorgens, What is this tube that's on Will? Why did it take him? Like how? Like, what is this weird upside down place? Why is this happening? And it's. Yeah. And so like, you just don't know anything and you don't know the feel of the show, right? Because you don't Because you know, when you've watched like season 3 and 4, you're like, OK, I kind of get the feel of the show. Like I can kind of expect what's going to happen.

14:49 But in season 1, I'm like, I don't know if Will's going to live, right? They may, they may choose to let Will die. And then that propels Joyce and Hopper on this mission to to find out whatever the Upside Down is and to stop it or. Wait, that's so true. Because like, it was originally just a standalone season. Like I don't know if the Duffer Brothers ever initially intended for there to be further seasons, but with the success of the show, they they did obviously decide to progress further. But yeah, initially it could have just been its own standalone limited series, 8 episodes.

15:29 And yeah, Will could have died. Right. And yeah, and I mean, you also feel that way because in the scene, like, they find Will, they take the tube thing off of them. It's really gross. And then Hopper gives Joyce instructions for how to like, when to do mouth to mouth on Will, like while Hopper is doing chest compressions for CPR. And when he's doing that, he has a flashback to when he loses his daughter. Sarah. Sarah had a cancer and yeah. And so that just makes you think like, is he gonna is will gonna live, man.

16:09 And so using that song there, gosh, it's, it's so powerful. Sorry. Real quick. Like it's because there's because like when you watch the scene, the right, like the directors, whoever they intentionally put the instrumental part of the song before Will breathes. So they so there's just this instrumental happening and then once Will awakens, like he starts breathing and they're like, oh, he's tagger then. That's exactly how they. Sound. That's exactly how Joy. Sounded. Is that like, that's when the lyrics actually come in, like when you hear the female singer start?

16:55 Yeah. And so I just think that's a really cool choice that they made. Oh, yeah. Wow. That's a great observation. Totally. I, you know, I had never heard, heard this, that song prior to watching the show. I just, all I remember is crying quite a bit. I remember I tried to put myself in Joyce's shoes as best I could. And I mean think about it, everyone thought up to this point that she was going crazy. They thought she was actually the Lulu, including her oldest son Jonathan. Even he thought that his mom has just gone crazy.

17:34 She had to attend a fake funeral that seemed was supposedly real. A fake funeral for her youngest son that her ex-husband Lonnie. He didn't even seem to care that his son had been missing or that he had quote UN quote passed away. And now here we are. It's culminated in this moment. She finally has found him. She's she has this confirmation that she's not insane that all of this was really going on only to realize that there's there's a chance even after going through all like all the hoops that they had to go through.

18:11 I mean, confronting the military at the lab or whoever they are. I don't know, Hawkins, whatever people to to even convince them to let them go through the gate to try to find Will, only to realize he still may not make it out alive. Yeah, he could die in her arms. It's wild. Yeah. Yeah. And so it just captures the heartbreak that Joyce and Hopper are feeling the entire time that they're looking for Will. And it's also interesting because the song is called When It's Cold I Would Like to Die. And you touched on that like that isolation connection component of coldness is not like cold can be interpreted not just by temperature, but by relationships.

18:59 Like, you give someone a cold shoulder, like, yeah, yeah. Or you're icy, like icy stare or something. That this song is used here too. Because you also see, I think at the end of Episode 7, when Will is shivering and Castle Byers, like, he's cold and alone and he doesn't know what to do. And so the only thing he can do is sing to himself. Should I stay or should I go? Like something to give him a sense of like connection to his brother. Like to have like to remember what was good in his life before all these traumatic events happened.

19:40 Oh yeah. So here's the scene of Joyce and Hopper performing CPR and having that emotional moment of revitalizing will I need. You to wake up now. I need. You to breathe.

20:15 Come on. Come on.

20:41 A heart wrenching. And then, as if that wasn't heart wrenching enough, you have Eddie's death happening in season 4. It's happening simultaneously as Max is dying. And let me tell you what I don't know about you. I can't watch that scene in particular without crying. I've rewatched the show as you all know if you heard our first episode 18 times, and I cry at that point every single time even though I know it's going to happen. Easily one of the most emotional scenes for me and all of Stranger Things.

21:17 Caleb McLaughlin, who plays Lucas, if you didn't know, his acting there is incredible. He actually improvised the line. Erica help Erica, his sister, as he's weeping and so anxious that his girlfriend is about to die. And then Joseph Quinn, who played Eddie, he also improvises the line when he's with Dustin. He's about to die. He says I love you, man. Before he took his last breath. I mean, absolutely heart wrenching. So we'll share those clips as well. Max, Max, Max No, no, no, Max. Max, stay with me, Max.

21:58 Stay with me. No, no, Max. Max. Stay with me. Just look. Look at me, Max. Max, Look. No. Stay with me, Max. Hang on. Just hang on there. We go good. The magic could graduate. I think it's my year, Anderson. I think it's. Fine in my year.

22:40 I love you there. Eddie.

23:15 So, Joel, why do you think this song when it's Cold, I'd like to die? Why do you think it resonates with the audience? Why is it so effective in the scenes in which it's used? Yeah, I think it resonates because everyone can agree with the album's title. So the song, when it's called I'd Like to Die, it's the last song on an album that's called Everything Is Wrong. And I think everyone understands that. Like, they understand that Everything Is Wrong. The album title that Moby came up with for that is inspired like from his reflections that he made, like later on in life where he said at the time I was and am still a vegan and an animal rights activist, really militant in all my beliefs.

24:14 So I would wake up really angry every day and sleep angry every night because I thought the world was in terrible shape. And I thought, what small thing can I do to express my beliefs that the world is in such terrible shape? That's so good. And also there's the reality that you don't have to be a Christian to recognize that the world is broken. Even Vecna and the Mind Flayer recognize this reality. Vecna chose to join the Mind Flayer because he believed wholeheartedly the Mind Flayer solution to tear down this world and build a quote UN quote better world.

25:00 What was the best answer to this problem like that? It's not enough to be convinced that the world is broken. You have to be convinced on what the solution is. And it seems that for Moby, he, based off the research I did, like he seems drawn to the teachings of Christ, but hasn't yet fully discovered or resonated with the solution to the brokenness of human sin in a fallen world. He doesn't see the solution as faith and repentance. Yeah. Yeah. Or like a different way to put it. Like I'm a, I'm a data person, I like data.

25:41 And so like a different way to put it could be that everyone has the same data as in like everyone knows and sees natural disaster, cancer, war, racism, famine, like all these terrible things that are in the world. Everyone agrees that those things are bad and that that the world is messed up. But not everyone agrees on why, like why these things happen or on what the solution is. So like some conclude that we should just despair and give up because the world won't get any better. You have those who just want to put their heads in the sand and just not pay attention to any of it.

26:37 Others may try to take a more proactive approach and think like, oh OK, well if we can just get the right political structure, get the right politicians in power or knowledge is power. So we need to educate everyone. And if everyone was just literate and could read. Or just generally nice to one another, like the cultural lie that I'll just try to be good and and be nice and hopefully that'll solve everything. Yeah.

27:07 And so the question that we ask is like, So what do we like, as Lauren and I are thinking about this, what do we as Christians believe about the brokenness of the world? And if there is any hope, well, yeah, we would say that there is hope. We believe that God sent His own Son into this broken world in order to live a perfect life, to die a sacrificial death on the cross on our behalf, to be raised again to life in order to make a way to be reconciled back to God the Father. If we place our faith in Him, we believe that Jesus will come back and make all things new, and He'll eliminate this wickedness and suffering once and for all.

27:57 Yeah, I long for that. And it's incredible that he he also just gives such good gifts that we don't deserve. And one of those gifts is gorgeous music to help us connect with one another and to our own human emotion. With that in mind, I think now's a great time that we do a deep dive into the actual instrumentalization of the song itself. Yeah, So something that's unique about this song and especially if you look at it in the context of the whole album because because Lauren mentioned earlier, like he's into techno, he's into punk, like he Moby writes other songs.

28:44 Like, we've been listening through the album to prepare for recording this episode and. It's like 90s rave music that could show up in a video game. Kind of like it, like it reminds me of Sonic the Hedgehog. Like if you've ever played Sonic the Hedgehog, like the GameCube era Sonic Adventure 2 Battle, Like if you've played that or any kind of Sonic game, it's that super upbeat, right? Just rave music. Means nothing to me, but I trust Joel's video game expertise. And so like, we're listening to the album and then we and then it just stops.

29:22 Like the the drum, there's no drums, there's no bass. It's just like piano, like just simple synth, piano, strings, acoustic guitar, Yeah. It's a ballad, right? It's a ballad. Like that's. Yeah, that's how Moby explains it. And yeah, it's very atmospheric and kind of haunting ish the. And like that comes from, I mean, there's a lot of things going on. Like when you listen to it, the melody is basically the same through the whole song. Like it's the Yeah. The ballad nature. Of it like it's just that the whole song, like the melody doesn't really change.

30:10 And then what's also cool is that he wrote the melody in the chords in such a way to where every other line the melody ends on a note. I know not at a piano right now, but it's like the melody ends on a note that's not in the chord. So like when, yeah, like when it's called I'd like to die, like that note on die that's over for any music nerds, Like that's over an A minor chord, but that note isn't in the chord. And so the whole reason I mentioned that is because it when when a note is played that's not in the chord, it normally creates a sense of tension.

31:00 And maybe even dissonance. Yeah, right. Yes, it can create dissonance, it can create tension. It creates this sense that there's not a resolution and. Which is so ironic because I don't know if you were going to get to this, but that there's not a resolution. Which is so interesting because the album's called Everything is Wrong and the song is about like like yearning for connection, wanting there to be a solution to the problem, but then there's not resolution. There's no and the song, there's no solution.

31:32 Yeah, Moby doesn't give a solution. Yeah. And so I think like that tension, that atmospheric quality, the lyrics, the style of the song, they help to really advance the plot of the series forward. True. And it really became a poignant musical motif, you might say, for characters who were, like we mentioned before, on the brink of death, or maybe they were being pulled back to life, particularly linking Season 1's rescue of Will with Season 4's near loss of Max. And this foreshadows resurrections and embodying the struggle that we experienced in the show between life and this void.

32:24 Sometimes they call it The Void, the Upside Down, through its evocative lyrics and atmospheric quality that Joel mentioned. Yeah, and like, you look at the lyrics, like one of the prominent ones is I don't want to swim forever when it's cold, I'd like to die. Those lyrics, they just capture the feeling of being lost. Like you're like, I don't want to swim forever. You're in an ocean like you. There's nothing around you. There's no land. Isolation. Yeah, you're isolated. You feel like you want to give up.

33:06 And I think that aligns with how the characters, like, especially Will feels trapped in the Upside Down, or trapped not just in the Upside Down, but trapped in some sort of trauma that has already happened to them, but they're having trouble escaping it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So in essence, the song, it isn't just background music. I don't think it was intended to just be background music. It's a narrative device that really does deepen the emotional stakes, heightens the emotional stakes by linking pivotal near death experiences across different seasons of the entire series, highlighting these characters fight for survival against supernatural forces.

34:03 Yeah, it's almost as if the Duffers, like, chose this melancholic, haunting song, which almost seems kind of supernatural ish in nature because of all the different supernatural battles that would take place throughout the show. And it's also supernatural processing all this with you. Yeah, well, I think that wraps up this episode. Yeah. Thank you all so much for listening. If you enjoyed listening, give us a review or a rating on Spotify as this helps us reach other listeners as well. Totally, and we wanted to go ahead and let you know our next episode will be a similar deep dive, but with the song Heroes by David Bowie, as well as the cover of Heroes by Peter Gabriel.

35:02 If you have any thoughts about how that song was utilized throughout Stranger Things or your opinion of this song itself, we'd love to hear from you. You can contact us at [email protected]. That's no as in KNOW or on Instagram at our handle Camp Nowhere pod. We will also include that in the description on Spotify. Thank you all so much again and we'll catch you on the next one. Bye. See you all.

36:03 Music.