So Great And Powerful
The second best time to discover a new artist is now.
June 25, 2024
(The My Little Pony Fan Labor Wiki uses he/him pronouns and so that's what I'll be using, but I'm not sure how official that is so do let me know if that is not what he uses.)
My first time coming across a So Great And Powerful (SGAP for short) song was his remix of Kupo by All Levels at Once - which is one of my favorite artists - in which the lyrics of this song about a developing relationship are spliced into "why don't we all break up?", "I'm a psychopath I'm in the moment" and "didn't try". I thought it was funny in a sort of resentful cartoon antagonist kind of way and moved on after enjoying it for a couple of days.
(For the record, the actual lyric is “why don’t we all break the [fall]”, it just sounds like that from the way it’s spliced.)
My second time coming across a SGAP song was a week or two ago, when I came across Replacer’s remix of Sorceress Girl. Replacer stands out to me from other pony musicians because a lot of his songs (I’m thinking of always meant to know and song for an earth pony here but there’s many more) have this very calm and reflective air to them, and I was pretty surprised he didn’t come up with this one. So I checked the original, and I’ve been listening to this song at least once very day since then. His voice is so soothing, the instruments feel more grounded and the “A kind voice, a gentle face” bit near the end just does it for me so much. Here, take a listen. I’m actually going to embed the video just this once instead of linking to it, so you can jam out with me right here. Don’t scroll too far, let’s relax.
All of his songs make me very emotional. They have this very soothing and affirming vibe, like they're trying to comfort someone who is down with all the kindness and gentleness in the world. A lot of his songs seem to be based on episodes of the show and elaborate on the feelings of the characters in that particular episode. I've even since come around to unironically appreciating his Kupo remix. The songs all have this same particular vibe, but each of them is so unique and has different levels of energy and theming. I'm really not very good at describing music but I did enjoy it a lot.
Now, if you have checked the channel this video is from, you will notice that this is not the original (I tricked you!). I’ve since come to learn that SGAP is somewhat infamous for posting songs, deleting them after some time, and then going radio silent for long stretches of time. The way I came to find this out was that I went to one of the Tumblr that haven’t been deleted yet and came across this honestly kind of scary sight.
Then I did the actual research and it wasn’t so scary anymore – it’s kind of beautiful actually. I’m paraphrasing this from the documentary his fans made about him which you can find here, but in short: SGAP says he is very fond of the community that was built around him and is very grateful for it, but also struggles with finding worth in his own work and doesn’t feel proud of them for very long. After being So Great And Powerful, he then was Mirrors for Princes, then Captive Unicorns, and to my knowledge he hasn’t made any public appearances since 2020. All of the uploads of his songs you can find nowadays are archival efforts by the community.
He seems to identify with the imagery of an empty set (written as {}), which in mathematics is a set that contains nothing. I’ve seen a couple of attempts to extract every bit of meaning out of this and his works in general with elaborate diagrams and collecting every single reference present in the lyrics, and frankly there’s not much I could add that probably hasn’t been thought of before. The simplest explanation is the most interesting to me. It’s something that is identified by containing nothing, but it is not nothing itself. It’ll always be something even if it’s empty – but it’s not so empty after all because nothing is something and something quite important in its context.
I can relate, in a way. I struggle with identity issues and some times I just want to throw it all away and be nothing. But I also don’t want to be nothing, I want to be something and I want to mean something to someone. I can imagin the kind of conflict SGAP went through and that it even affect the way he made his songs. In particular, both of his songs under Mirrors for Princess seem to be a direct message to his community (here and here).
Speaking of, he certainly has a very dedicated community even if it is a small one, and there’s a number of projects they have made based off his work including their own album called Sori 52 (it seems like 4 songs have been deleted or privated) and covers of his songs sung by the subreddit members. I’ll embed the Sorceress Girl cover here because I think it’s very good.
My favorite part of the song is kind of ruined here because you lose the gentleness with so many people singing at once, but the rest of the song up until then sounds great to me in this style. I see it as a community repeating the affirmations that have inspired them to be who they are, trying to inspire others and their own creator to do the same. And while even the subreddit has been cold for a couple of months now, it still feels like a very active and dedicated community to me.
While looking up more of his works, I came across an archival blog on Tumblr that claims SGAP blocked them. I’ve also seen some comments on these videos that are really entitled and rude. I really don’t want to end this post on a negative note, but it would also be disingenuous if I sang the praises of a community that I barely know about without talking about these incidents.
It does seem like SGAP is upset by the continuing presence of his songs one way or another, and I will be taking down the links in this post if SGAP himself comes out and directly states he doesn’t want his music anywhere anymore, but for I will keep them here because I truly do believe these songs are great and I would like for more people to enjoy them.
The timeline on SGAP’s stance on archiving is not clear to me so I can’t tell if it has softened or intensified throughout the years, but to my knowledge he has not made any attempts to take these archives down or directly stated he wants them gone. Watching the documentary singing the communities praises and then seeing SGAP’s side of the issue and the way some people talk about him soured things for me a little, but it is what it is. These songs still mean a lot to me, and I will continue to enjoy them in one way or another no matter what happens.
But in any case, nothing I could post here would be as meaningful and emotional as the songs themselves – so I’ll be sharing some links to my favorite songs in no particular order (except Sorceress Girl that’s my favorite).
I haven’t finished listening to his whole discography just yet, and I think I will take my time with it because I loved the feeling of slowly coming across his different works. You can find (maybe) all of his work as SGAP on this archival YouTube channel, and you can easily download all of his songs up to 2017 from this site (doesn’t include Captive Unicorns). I'm not sure if there's a comprehensive source for Mirrors for Princess and Captive Unicorns, but you can search for those on YouTube and find at least some of them throughout different channels.
I will be finishing this off with one of the posts he left on his Tumblr. It's not there anymore. I think it’s very powerful even on its own.
DELETE SGAP / DELETE THE ARCHIVES / DESTROY ALL EVIDENCE / LEAVE NO TRACE
FORGET WHAT YOU CAN / REPRESS WHAT YOU NEED / REMEMBER IF YOU MUST / BUT NEVER SPEAK OF IT / DENY EVERYTHING
TURN YOUR BACK ON THEM / CUT ALL TIES / GIVE NO WARNINGS / SAY NO GOODBYES
BE IN THE SILENCE / BE STILL / DO NOT BE AFRAID / TO HAVE NOTHING / TO BE NOBODY / DO NOT BE AFRAID TO BE ALONE
FROM THE EMPTINESS / SOMETHING NEW
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