On “I Used to Call Mary,” Oreaganomics Wonders Why Everything Got Worse
Punk Head: You say you “barely wanna do this,” yet you’re here. What keeps pulling you back?**
Oreaganomics: Probably because music is still one of the few places where I can turn something irritating, depressing, funny, or absurd into something useful. I can complain about something for twenty minutes and nothing happens. Put the same thought in a song and suddenly it has a purpose. So apparently I wanna do this slightly more than I don’t.
Punk Head: Why Mary?
Oreaganomics: Mary sounded like somebody or something you used to be able to reach. It could be a real person, something spiritual, a vice, or something else entirely. I like that all of those possibilities can live in the same name. I don’t really want to narrow it down more than that.
Punk Head: You’ve described the song as being about customer service. How did that become worthy of a song rather than just a complaint?
Oreaganomics: Because it’s bigger than customer service. 2020s have resulted in the enshittification into almost every aspect of life. Things are worse, more expensive, less personal, and somehow everybody is expected to just accept it as the new normal. Customer service is just one of the easiest places to see it. Now you get bots, delays, menus when you already subscribed with extra fees, and worse service for more money. The song came from that feeling that we’re all slowly being trained to accept a shittier quality of life.
Punk Head: You say Mary can mean one of four things. Are you deliberately making the listener work for the answer?
Oreaganomics: A little bit. I don’t really want there to be one answer. If I tell you exactly what Mary is, the song gets smaller. I’d rather different people hear different things in it and all of them can be right.
Punk Head: Is “I Used to Call Mary” ultimately an anti-technology song, or an anti-bad-human-experience song?
Oreaganomics: Definitely the second one. I don’t hate technology. I hate when technology is used as an excuse to make the human experience worse. Technology is supposed to get rid of bullshit. Sometimes we automate the bullshit instead.
Punk Head: You made the record because you were contractually obligated to. Did being paid make the music better, worse, or simply more honest?
Oreaganomics: Probably more honest. There’s this romantic idea that every record has to come from some huge artistic calling. Sometimes somebody pays you and you have to make the record. That’s been true of art forever. The obligation actually takes some of the preciousness out of it. You stop waiting around to feel inspired and just make something. Sometimes that ends up being more truthful anyway.
