“Incredible Thoughts” by The Lonely Island brings about the idea of not conforming to society’s expectations. Lines like “what if a garbage man was actually smart, a common misconception that we’re tearing apart”(0:44) reinforce this idea. This song uses a lot of juxtaposition and imagery to send the message that “we don’t have to view everything the same way.” Like Apple, the song promotes thinking differently, or having incredible thoughts. Now I’m not saying that this song is a lyrical masterpiece or even a deep song; The Lonely Island is not known for writing particularly serious songs, with titles like “Threw it on the Ground” and “I Just Had Sex”. That being said, I do think that this song is quite clever. Now I’m about to talk about the use of poetic devices in this song, but something that I we must remember with this song is that it uses the ideas of irony and satire excellently. 

“Incredible Thoughts” uses poetic devices like juxtaposition and imagery to create an interesting image in your mind as you listen to the song, and it makes sense that it does. The song was made as a part of the soundtrack to the movie “Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping”. The song starts with an entire verse chock-full of imagery: “A snow-white dove in the pitch black night, A rain drop falls from tremendous heights, A wave crashes off of a cliff in Scotland, A child bites an apple but the core is rotten”(0:23). That first line in the verse is also a great example of the juxtaposition seen in this song. However, like I said before, the use of irony in this song is brilliant. Although some of the lines do use juxtaposition and imagery well, a lot of the lines are only pretending to use them. Lines like “what if a butterfly was actually butter”(1:48) show that the song is not actually as smart as it makes itself out to be. The expectation of these “amazing ideas” does not meet everything written in this song. 

One of the big reasons I like this song so much is how lighthearted it is. Most of the songs I talk about in this 5 song playlist are generally slow and mellow, but this song is upbeat, lighthearted, and reminds me of happy times. I remember first watching “Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping” in 2018, either before or during the PLP trip to Oregon, one of the better times of my life. This song was by far the one that hit me the most from the movie. The song was set up as the music climax of the film, it was the song that everyone got to collaborate on. The personification of the fish (2:02) was performed by the chef who never got to showcase his musical talents the entire film. The saxophone solo near the end was the band manager who never got the musical fame he wanted. 

Something that makes this song so attractive is its rhythm. The song relies heavily on couplets and repetition. The same words are used multiple times: “to a dog, dog food is just food”(0:49), or the line “incredible thoughts, incredible minds”(0:11) is repeated 4 or 5 times. On top of that, the entire song is just couplets. Every pair of lines rhymes with each other and only each other. There is no verse in this song that is not entirely made up of couplets and I think that’s the reason this song is so enjoyable. It is very nice to have a song that is not sorrowful or sad. Sometimes, a lighthearted joke is exactly what you want to listen to.