30 Days of Carol: Day 15 – I Found Either the Best or Worst Song to Score the Carol Trailer

click for all 30 Days of Carol

For the most part, I’m a person with a clear mind. It’s incredible, really, having little to no thoughts when idle. When I do chores or even sometimes when I’m driving, it’s often in dead silence, but not because I’m with my thoughts – it’s because I’m content to sit with the nothing. Chilling stuff. I had an ex who would come home and find me in a room without music or a podcast on and was deeply unsettled every time it happened. Not that music’s or podcasts’ explicit purpose is for distraction, but there is an element of turning it all off.

It’s why when thoughts come through without much effort on my end, I take note of them. They are often nonsense, which is maybe the reason I exist in this subdued state – my brain has trained itself to filter out bad or poppycock thoughts, and it just so happens to be all of them. Recently before bed, my brain in a vulnerable state from another exhausting day, one such thought snuck in: “What if you set the Carol trailer to 311’s ‘Amber’,” it thought, to which I thought back, “Lol.” (For all of our readers below the age of 25, 311 was an alt-rock-ska-fusion band popular in the 90s, which as you can tell from my assessment of their genre produced some very questionable music.)

“It might be the worst but it might be the best actually?” it continued on. “For sure,” I thought back, and then set out to test our theory the next morning. After watching it through while screaming many, many times over, I think it’s so the worst that it’s the best? It honestly does seem to follow the story with the timing of the lyrics. Confirm or deny in the comments.

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!

Erin

Los Angeles based writer. Let's keep it clean out there!

Erin has written 208 articles for us.

54 Comments

    • I mean, hearing this band for the first time (they never released anything in the UK it seems; one wonders why) this is just a general statement of denial.

  1. I’m conflicted. Carol holds a special place in my heart. But I had managed to completely block out 311 in my memory.

  2. I saw Mommi kissing Therese,
    In the motel last night,
    She didn’t see the creep,
    Who was trying to steal her daughter without a peep,
    That was so fucked up,
    I hope he gets what’s coming to him, that mother-*bleep*

    Then I saw Mommi tickle Therese,
    Underneath the snowy white sheets,
    Oh, what a laugh it would have been,
    If Daddy had only seen,
    Mommi kissing Therese last night

  3. Ma’am…do you realize amber means slow down and come to a complete stop, it does not mean go?

  4. (at 2:07) The lyric “don’t give up your independencccceeeeeee” playing over the shot of Carol asking Therese to move in with her. WOW. WOW.

  5. Confession time: “amber” was my ringtone for years. Remember ringtones, you guys?

  6. It would work with a completely different pace trailer…. But maybe not the current one we know and love.

  7. ‘Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad!’

    -7-year-old me, while using our family computer for the first time to research ‘pussy cats’ for a class presentation on pets.

  8. this song has been stuck in my head since viewing this video ~2 hours ago and now it’s like 2002 in here and i’m dating a boy with bleached tips who likes to let his mcdonalds breakfast chill for an hour before eating it

  9. Okay now I want to – know. I think. I mean, to ask you… things. But I’m not sure you want that.

  10. Wow I feel like the music is encouraging me to write a review of Carol describing it as “a romp”, which, maybe?

    Anyway, happy Ides of Carol!

  11. I was impressed with the blocking, almost as if “311” had had precognition that you would be making this trailermix and arranged their tune accordingly !

    I’m also impressed by everyone who actually heard the lyrics, usually I’m a stickler for lyrics but here I just watched the lovely pictures

Comments are closed.