Usually when an artist has a "Greatest Hits" album, it holds their most popular songs over the years. However, Waterparks decided to make and release theirs at the same time.
I'm going to say it, Greatest Hits is an artistic masterpiece. Waterpark’s fourth studio album was created by members Awsten Knight, Geoff Wigington, and Otto Wood. After making it out of an unfortunate record deal with Equal Vision records and signing to their new label, 300 Entertainment, this band has changed its whole aesthetic in only two years.
Greatest Hits features 17 different songs of different styles, with the singles of the album being Lowkey as Hell, Snow Globe, Numb, You’d be Paranoid too (If everyone you knew was out to get you), Just Kidding and Violet. Lowkey as Hell is the top song at over eight million listens, followed by Numb and Snow Globe.
My favorite thing to do with albums by artists that I feel like I’ve sold my soul to is dissecting every song slowly in its entirety. That is what I am going to do.
Let’s start with Greatest Hits. It’s the first track and the title track of the album. Listening to the song makes me think of “Cherry Red” from their earlier album FANDOM, especially the beginning of the song. It’s very melodic, with random sounds that make it seem like you’re standing near a busy highway. The song ends with the words, “These are your greatest hits,” introducing a dream concept and preparing the audience for what will be heard ahead.
With Fuzzy, the second track, the first words are, “My demons drive a limo, straight up to my window, I hide under my pillow, welcome to the intro,” signifying that it’s the beginning of the night and supporting the dream concept. A fun fact about this song is that the band used 10 guitars to produce the sound of the post-chorus. This song has the same energy as Watch What Happens Next also from their previous album. My favorite lyric is, “Black cat, like a bad sign, I jet when it's midnight,” because Knight has an adorable little black cat named Jet.
The third track, first leak and first single is Lowkey as Hell. This song was leaked on Knight’s Instagram Live on September 17th, 2021. Not only did he leak the song, but he also cut off all the green in his hair. I was one of the many fans in that Instagram live, and that definitely caught me by surprise. I think the song is supposed to describe how the last year had been for Knight. Its goal was to contradict how Knight acts on stage versus his everyday life, how he’s extroverted even though at the same time he is also an introvert. However, the live insinuates that it’s meant to be an end of an era, the FANDOM era.
The fourth song and third single from the band, Numb, feels like an angry song. This song compares loud materialism to private emotion, especially the first lyrics. I feel like the Coldplay name drop was Knight choosing violence about Coldplay’s label for never letting them say a bad word. The lines “You only like me when I’m numb,” could correspond with the fans, who call themselves Parxies. There is a reason that Awsten doesn’t see his mentions very much, it’s because “he blocked them all.”
Violet! Was inspired by a fan and their repeated attempts to invade his personal privacy. Knight has posted videos on TikTok with Violet being the background music and having in captions, “watching You season three thinking about how I wrote an entire song about my stalker experience and even made a reference to the show, and it still didn’t get synced into the new season RIP Waterparks.” Despite it being about an uncomfortable experience, it’s a song that anyone can dance to.
Snow Globe has made many of us sob ourselves to sleep. A fun fact about this song is that it was completely improvised. The lyrics, “I’ve been dead since 2016, so good morning can you fix me,” makes me think that something happened during the Double Dare phase and now he’s met someone who can fix it, “my tiny little world is in your hands so shake it like a snow globe ---- my plans for good,” or completely ruin him. The lyrics “7pm, let it sink in” again relates back to their previous album, but instead of a song it’s the album cover. At the bottom of the FANDOM album cover, the words “presented by Waterparks, coming to theaters Saturday at 7pm ∞/∞/∞.” The infinity signs signify there is no date, so is this something to wait for or something we can’t ever have?
Just Kidding is a song that is soaking in mental health awareness, it’s very marinated. During the pandemic, Knight took a long break from social media to gain a sense of himself as a person and self-care.
The Secret Life of Me and Just Kidding go with each other. I feel that it’s to show how you can go from feeling so down to feeling so high in a short amount of time. It’s a song that perfectly displays the sense of disconnecting from reality and going somewhere where nothing means anything.
American Graffiti was a tricky one to figure out. The lyrics I’m focusing on are, “Yeah, you've been reading all about me, and you're loving what you found, I'm like American graffiti.” I’m assuming he’s talking about the fans once again, and as the song continues, I feel like it’s a contrast between how the fans view things versus Knight’s personal perspective. However, at the beginning he says, “Maybe the world was made in six days, but I could ruin mine by Monday.” It could be about how people on social media are walking on eggshells regarding what they post due to cancel culture.
You’d be Paranoid Too is the name of Knight’s book released in 2019, and the name of the seventh song on the album. I think this song has the same concept as American Graffiti, but it’s more open and obvious. I think Knight is paranoid about people online and in his life who have caused him to have a lot of built-up stress. This can also add emphasis to “walking on eggshells” because he could be afraid of making a mistake and ruining it all.
Fruit Roll-Ups is a love song in disguise. That’s it, I’m not going to dissect this one because I don’t want to be the one dissecting Knight’s love for someone. That’s not my job and not my place. The song smacks though, 10/10.
LIKE IT is my absolute favorite of the album. It’s sad because it only has a bit over 6,000 listens, and most of them are probably from me. The beginning and the end of the song feature RockSound Multimedia Manager, James Wilson-Taylor, and we love to see it. This song is filled with teenage angst since Knight is now 17 instead of 29 and is a great song to release your frustrations that have been building up. Just by reading the lyrics without the song playing in the background, the message is that Knight feels that his feelings get more attention when they are put in a song. He also kind of criticizes his music career with, “I feel cursed on tour with a big smile on, do I do this for a living or a death? It's like, I wanna get away but I'm put in these situations where instead of being creative, I'm making business decisions.” However, why is the song called LIKE IT, when he doesn’t seem to like what he’s talking about? Simple, it’s supposed to be contradictory.
Gladiator was a song that I didn’t understand for a long time. Even after countless minutes of listening to it over and over again, I couldn’t understand the concept. I played the word association game with Gladiator and came up with Ancient Rome. Gladiators were put to fight against each other as a form of entertainment. After being on the internet for so long I’ve seen the modern-day media put people against each other as a form of entertainment. I feel like Knight noticed this as well, or even had his own experience with it.
Magnetic lives up to its name. With lyrics like, “I'm magnetic to the things I hate the most,” it’s supposed to represent things Knight attracts into his life. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen lyrics like this, for example, “I fall in love with everything that wants nothing to do with me,” from the song Royal on the album Double Dare.
Crying Over it All sounds like a ballad written by Queen. It feels like Knight is trying to describe how he feels about thinking of the end of Waterparks as a band. The lyrics, “Soon everyone will be gone, they'll forget my albums, I hope you'll be here when it's done,” makes it seem like a request to remember all his artistic works after he is gone.
Ice Bath has a repeat of Greatest Hits in the beginning of the song. If Greatest Hits signaled the beginning of the dream sequence, then Ice Bath signals the end of the dream sequence. It’s symbolizing the process of waking up, no longer dissociating. This whole album is based on what happens when you sleep, like dreams and nightmares, and now the song represents waking up and going back to every-day life.
See You in The Future, there’s a lot to unpack here. It’s almost like a slap back to reality, and it leaves little snippets relating back to the rest of the songs on the album. It really puts a big red circle on the chaotic reality that is everyday life with the media. If you look up this song on streaming services and other distributors now, the name will say See You in in The Future. As fans do with an album release, sometimes they get a tattoo to represent the album or a song in some way. Well, twitter user @seeyouinin got a tattoo of this song, only the artist messed up the title. Knight saw the tattoo, and tweeted back to them saying “HEY I SAW YOUR TATTOO AND I FIGURED THE LEAST WE COULD DO IS CHANGE THE SONG TITLE FOR U.” Unfortunately, the title stayed the same on YouTube, but it was changed on Spotify and Apple Music.
In conclusion, does Greatest Hits live up to its name? That's up to you to decide.
2021
