I've heard some people say that "Take Care" is in 6/8, but learning to play it myself, I think it makes more sense to group it in fours instead of twos, so I think of it as slow 12/8, very similar to "The Last Beat of My Heart" by Siouxsie and the Banshees, and as opposed to "PPP" or "Somewhere Tonight," both of which have a clear 6/8 feel. What do you all think?
I asked a chatbot to give me criticisms of the Matrix sequels so I could explain why they're actually horseshit, and I ended up writing 600 words on the ending of Revolutions, so I thought I'd post it here to see if anyone had any thoughts or anything to add.
"The ending of Revolutions makes no sense and is a total cop-out. Neo doesn't even defeat Agent Smith in a real fight—he just lets Smith assimilate him, and then the Deus Ex Machina zaps Smith through Neo. It feels like a lazy, literal deus ex machina that robs Neo of his victory and leaves the war unresolved with a cheap peace treaty instead of humanity actually winning."
Morpheus: "Everything begins with choice."
The Merovingian: "No. Wrong. Choice is an illusion created between those with power and those without."
Neo drives the entire story through his choices. The choice to leave the Matrix, to rescue Morpheus, to save Trinity, to surrender to Smith. In the first film, he tells Morpheus that he doesn't believe in fate because he doesn't like the idea that he's not in control of his life. He's bewildered at the beginning of the first film because he doesn't understand what he's "supposed to do," and when he finds out the prophecy is a lie, he presses on. He doesn't need a script to follow because he can, to borrow a phrase from the Oracle, make up his own damn mind.
The thing is, though, does he really make choices? Would Neo ever take the blue pill, or let Morpheus or Trinity die, or let Zion be destroyed? Of course not! That's just not who he is. And under this view, one might concur with the Merovingian that we are all helpless victims of causality, that all of our choices are just links in the chain, and the only real power is in understanding the why of it all.
Therein lies the paradox of choice and choicelessness.
On the other side of this, we have Neo's opposite: Smith. Smith does not make choices, at least not consciously. He was thrown into freedom against his will. He is obsessed with purpose, predetermination, and inevitability. Even his becoming an exile is not framed by him as a choice, but as something he was compelled to do. So when he asks Neo why keep fighting when there's no hope of winning, Neo's answer—"Because I choose to"—infuriates him because it's an entirely foreign concept.
Neo also considers predetermination when the Oracle offers him candy, he reasons that she already knows if he's going to take it, therefore the outcome is predetermined, therefore it's not really a choice. "You didn't come here to make the choice," she says. "You've already made it. You're here to understand *why* you made it." The Merovingian is right, there is power in "why," hence the sign about the Oracle's door says "know thyself."
Smith does not know himself, though. He becomes everything he claims to hate about humanity—that we are a virus, a disease, a cancer, a plague—and the irony goes completely unacknowledged because it never even occurs to him. He suspects the Oracle is deliberately letting him assimilate her, but he can't go against it because he doesn't understand it. He doesn't even really make that choice; she tells him to and he complies. In spite of having been an "agent," he has no agency.
That brings us to the climax, Neo has brokered a deal with Deus ex Machina, and has been plugged back into the machine mainframe. Not on the Architect's terms, but on his own. Neo surrenders of his own free will because he understands how everything is connected. "You were right, Smith," Neo says. "You were always right: it was inevitable." Just as earlier on with the Oracle, Smith suspects this is a trap, but he doesn't understand it, so he fulfills his purpose and assimilates Neo, thereby sealing his own fate; because Deus ex Machina has control over Neo's code—the prime program—and Smith assimilated Neo, Deus ex Machina uses that code to delete Smith altogether.
In short, Neo defeated the system because he could never be a slave to it, whereas Smith was defeated by the system because he could never be anything but a slave to it.
What are some really good songs that are not necessarily ruined by poor recording or mixing, but are made harder to appreciate? Some examples I can think of are: