"I grew up listening to the Mamas and the Papas' hits but had never heard their albums before this year. I had no idea anything as creepy as Mansions lurked within their sunny oeuvre. Its sound is ominous, its mood one of stoned paranoia, its subject rich hippies sequestered in the titular luxury homes, haunted by the sensation that the flower-power dream is going wrong. The weirdest thing about it is its eerie prescience."
"There's a well-known cognitive bias where, after you become aware of something new, you start seeing it everywhere. It's known as the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, but from this year, I'll think of it as the Katy B effect, after Katy on a Mission became the unexpected soundtrack of my summer. Having spent my teens and early 20s in New Zealand, I'd never heard it before; I first clocked it at Glastonbury,"
‘Mansions,’ a track by the Mamas and the Papas, juxtaposes sunny pop harmonies with an ominous sound and a mood of stoned paranoia. The lyrics picture wealthy hippies sequestered in luxury homes, haunted by the sense that the flower-power dream is unraveling. The song’s prescience gains added chill from the proximity of the Manson murders and from the group’s own earlier song 'Strange Young Girls,' which depicts vulnerable recruits similar to those who joined Charles Manson. Katy B’s 'Katy on a Mission' resurfaced as an unexpected soundtrack years later, creating a Baader-Meinhof effect of repeated encounters. Rediscovery of the track produced feelings of cultural connection and revived youth memories.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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