Review
Genre and Mood
MYDY were still Mydy Rabycad to most of their audience when they released Freedom in May 2019, though the single already carries the short name. The Prague band are filed under electropop, and call their own style glamtronic: glam rock meeting contemporary electronic music. No review describes how Freedom sounds, so the feelings named here, playful and liberating, are only this page’s reading of its title and its costumed video.
Song Summary
Freedom is a single of one song, released on 17 May 2019 by 420 Production and two and a half minutes long. What it is about, the sources do not say. What the band said is what it meant to them: “Freedom vnímáme jako takový předěl mezi naší dosavadní kariérou a novou érou kapely,” producer and keyboard player Nèro Scartch told Novinky, a dividing line between their career so far and a new era.
Musical Breakdown
No source walks through the song, so this breakdown only points at what to listen for.
Main Section
At two and a half minutes, Freedom has no room for a long introduction or a slow fade. Listen for how quickly the song reaches its title, and how often it returns to it.
Outro
Notice whether it ends on a full band or on the voice alone.
Concepts in Focus
The music video came in October 2019, months after the single, as the announcement of the album Numbers. Its idea came from the singer Žofie Dařbujánová: the musicians appear in slightly fantastical costumes, among places and cities where the band had felt good, so that Brno meets Seoul.
The band kept returning to the song. In 2020, unable to meet fans at concerts, they recorded what they called “this little version” of Freedom, the Rrrrrr Version, an alternate version produced by Tomáš Konůpka and Nèro Scartch. And the live recording of 22 November 2019 at Forum Karlín in Prague, published in 2021, catches it on the night the band played their last concert as Mydy Rabycad.
Artistic Context
Mydy Rabycad formed in Prague in summer 2012 around Žofie Dařbujánová, Mikuláš Pejcha, Nèro Scartch and Jan Drábek, and their styles include electroswing, the style of Caravan Palace – Lone Digger. Numbers, released in October 2019, has eight songs about success measured in likes, followers and bank balances; Freedom is not among them.
Impact and Reception
The sources record what Freedom meant for the band rather than how it was received. ČT24 quoted Nèro Scartch on Numbers: “S deskou Numbers přichází nová kapitola téhle kapely,” a new chapter. Listen to the single first, then to Forum Karlín, and hear the turn.
