“Banana Mae”—the 2^nd track on Golden Tickets—is probably the greatest song ever written whose subject-matter is the twitter feed of a young girl.  I’m about 99.5% sure that this is the girl in question.

The song kicks off with these lyrics:

Follow me, Banana Mae,
if you wanna seeWhat I have to say. 
Now I’m only less than twenty-tres.
ut I’ll twit a tweet
to make your hair turn gray. 
My real name is Anna Mae
[“Not like ‘Anime’ like animation, but like Anna…Mae.  Like two words, like Anna…Mae. Like Anna…Mae *fastforward repeat breakdown*”]
Let me sing you some
selections from my twitter page.

What is so peculiar/unusual and cool about this concept is that it breaks the song’s hermetic seal of romanticized artistic self-reference.

As soon as I listen to the song’s 1^st verse, I can—if I so choose—leave the song behind and go interact with it’s actual subject, via twitter.

In reality, I’ll probably refrain from doing this, since this wee, young lass probably doesn’t need to be hearing from gnarly old PR guys.

But it’s the technical possibility of interaction that is so appealing.

When he was in Apogee, before forming WHY?, Yoni Wolf says:

I always liked to inflict a moment in the spotlight on members of the audience–not voluntary or involuntary, but just regardless of the individual preference–to frame them in this temporary bubble of fame.

This thematic inclination towards breaking the fourth wall & incorporating the audience into the performance eventually manifested in a novel format for composition whose fruits are collected on the Golden Tickets EP:

“We would write a theme song [about a fan]… Like Mighty Mouse. It would be a song about that person.”

They did a Golden Ticket song to raise money for victims of the Tsunami in Japan.  They did a Golden Ticket contest to benefit victims of Tornado devastation in the South.  They sold a Golden Ticket on eBay.  They did an iconography contest, and gave a golden ticket to the winner.  They did a video contest and awarded a Golden Ticket to a man who didn’t even attempt to do anything sensible or edited in any interesting way, but merely submitted footage of his shirtless & dreaded self mouthing a wordless monologue into the silence stipulated in the rules of the contest.

Unlike the other contestants who pretty much lucked out or were merely generously, Dropjaw earned his Golden Ticket.   

If you purchase the Gold Vinyl format of WHY’s Golden Ticket EP, you might get lucky and find a golden ticket of your own in the record sleeve.  Redeem this ticket, and you can have your own theme song written.

WHY? ask WHY? Just buy the record.