Big Mess

From Tim Burton’s classics like Pee-wee’s Big Adventure and The Nightmare Before Christmas to The Simpsons, Danny Elfman’s world-class scores have become indelible elements of some of the most beloved movies and TV shows of the past three decades. In preparing for a career-spanning live performance at the 2020 Coachella festival, Elfman began working on a set that would combine his film work with reimagined versions of songs from his old band, LA New Wave pioneers Oingo Boingo, and new chamber pop compositions written for a live rock band. When the festival was canceled due to the global pandemic, Elfman continued writing through lockdown and ended up with two albums’ worth of material, which he duly recorded with assistance from Robin Finck (Nine Inch Nails, Guns N’ Roses), Josh Freese (Weezer, Devo), Stu Brooks (Lady Gaga, Dub Trio), and renowned guitarist Nili Brosh. The result is Big Mess, his first solo album since 1984 and a collection of material unlike anything Elfman has previously created. “This came out of the shitstorm that was 2020,” he tells Apple Music. “I was feeling frustrated from every side, but particularly from what I was seeing in society. I haven’t seen the country so divided since the Vietnam War.”

In channeling that frustration, Elfman combined symphony orchestration with traditional rock band elements to write some of the heaviest and most chaotic music of his career. “The songs were all coming out in pairs,” he says. “Heavy and fast and crazy, and then light—like each one was a reaction to the other. It felt like I was developing two different albums, hence the title. I became more and more aware of the fact that I have two very functional dysfunctional writers living inside me, and they don’t like each other.” Below, he discusses some of the key tracks from Big Mess.

“Sorry”
“This was my first song for Big Mess. It started as a concept piece about combining an orchestra and rock band in a way I’d been thinking about for a while. It ended up as an explosion of frustration and pent-up anger.”

“True”
“This song was a new thing for me, writing from such a personal place. It wasn't something I set out to do—it just happened. And it was also the song where I was finding a new voice for this album, because I clearly can’t sing as high as I used to. ‘True’ was the song where I was finding myself able to sing in a way that I couldn’t do 30 years ago. I was surprised by how dark it came out, but that’s where I was at in 2020 when I wrote it.”

“In Time”
“This is another personal song, reflecting on the passage of time and the end of everything. I don’t want to overexplain the lyrics, other than to say that the idea of finality was floating around in my mind and just kind of came to the surface in this song. It’s something that artists have been obsessed with for years. If you look at a Titian painting from the Renaissance, it’s about the transient, momentary thing that this life is.”

“Dance With the Lemurs”
“This is another personal reflection on my life and the process of aging. That sounds grim, but I feel like it’s a light song at the same time. I was surprised that I wrote about that topic—it feels like something I wouldn’t normally let out. At first, it felt too personal to even put out. I thought maybe I was going to just release the fun, fast stuff and keep songs like this in my own archives. But eventually I figured I should put it out.”

“Happy”
“I wanted to have a bit of fun creating a song that began like a bubbly pop song and slowly degraded into a subversive, nasty rant. At the beginning, the song pulls in one direction, and by the end you’re going, ‘What is this place I was lured into?’ It was kind of designed to be a little bit of a trap, like, ‘Come on in, it’s a nice safe place.’ And by the end, it’s really despicable.”

“Just a Human”
“This song is kind of a counterpoint to ‘Kick Me’—again, the songs were written in pairs. It’s part of the schizophrenic cacophony I was feeling during lockdown in 2020, when anger, frustration, and pure ridiculous absurdity were mixing all together in my mind.”

“Devil Take Away”
“This was totally off the cuff and just pure fun for me. I decided to just pick up the guitar, let it run amok, come up with improvised lyrics, and then not try to fix it. It was more of a really fun exercise more than anything else. I wrote this one after ‘Everybody Loves You,’ which is really elaborate, and I’m talking about God and my place on the planet. After that, I wanted to do something where no thought goes into it and I don’t go back and reshape it, which is typically how I write. So this was just pure improvisational mayhem.”

“Native Intelligence”
“This was a tricky one. I was still obsessed with ways of combining the orchestra strings and the band, and this was the song I was most pleased with in that exploration. I was also reflecting my feelings about the political moment of living in America in 2020.”

“Kick Me”
“Nothing is more fun for me than poking a stick in the eye of celebrity mentality and the unique love-hate relationship celebrities often have with their fans. People become celebrities for the most peculiar reasons, and we live in a time where one can be an enormous celebrity without even having any particular talent. The concept of celebrity and the relationship between celebrities and the public—this weird interdependency—has always fascinated me. I find it to be constantly humorous.”

“Insects”
“I had so much fun reworking this old Oingo Boingo song, I just had to include it.”