Gooseworx‘s “The One Who’s Running The Show,” from the latest episode of The Amazing Digital Circus, does something most villain songs don’t: it sounds genuinely fun. Caine sings about his absolute control over the Digital Circus over a lush showtune arrangement with big-band brass and a Tin Pan Alley harmonic sensibility, and the cheerfulness is exactly the point.
The Amazing Digital Circus is a web series that launched in 2023 and will have its final episode this June. The eighth episode, entitled “hjsakldfhl,” of the nine-part series premiered on March 20th and included a major plot twist.
The show is described as a “psychological dark comedy about cute cartoon characters who hate their lives and want to leave,” as per Glitch Productions. Gooseworx explained on X that the show is inspired by the 1967 post-apocalyptic science fiction short story “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream.”
“But instead of AM being a living embodiment of hate, he’s a fun-loving wacky little guy,” they add.
That “wacky little guy” is Caine, the main antagonist of The Amazing Digital Circus. His name is an acronym for “Creative Artificial Intelligence Networking Entity,” and he effectively controls the Digital Circus in which the other characters are trapped.
Gooseworx embodied the juxtaposition of dark existentialism and a bright, colorful world in the latest episode with a song called “The One Who’s Running The Show.” In it, Caine sings to the rest of the cast about his power over them, claiming his “divinity is past infinity,” and to not “forget who’s running the show.” (The lyrics also include a reference to the show’s inspiration with “Don’t need to scream if ya ain’t got a mouth.”)
What makes the song effective, though, is that Caine’s declaration of supreme power is delivered over a number that sounds almost cheerful. Gooseworx composed “The One Who’s Running The Show” and worked with orchestrator Josh Plotner and lyricist Dave Capdevielle to pair the boastful lyrics with a lush showtune arrangement complete with a lavish intro and big-band brass.
Harmonically, Gooseworx used seventh chords to create a lusher sound. She also took a few chord progression cues from Tin Pan Alley. After a bar of G (the I chord), the song moves to Bmin7. We then descend to Bbdim7 to connect to Amin7 (the ii7 chord). This movement is called a chromatic diminished passing chord and can be found in jazz standards like “Someday My Prince Will Come” and “If I Had You.”
Altogether, it sounds like a schmoozy vaudeville number, and nowhere near as menacing as its intent. This is, however, the show’s main aesthetic in both music and graphics.
In an interview with Cartoon Brew, Gooseworx said “When developing the look, we wanted to ride the line between retro 3d and toys,” she said. “We ended up going for a rose-tinted version of that, the way our child brains perceived these amazing revolutionary graphics at the time. I’m a big fan of juxtapositions like happy music playing to something horrifying or cute little characters being miserable, so I wanted the look of the show to not necessarily reflect the darker side of the series.”
“The One Who’s Running The Show” captures everything that makes The Amazing Digital Circus work. Its bright spectacle and unsettling humor evoke a deep sense of something being very wrong beneath the surface. Turning Caine’s control into a showstopper of a tune makes the song feel catchy on first listen and more disturbing the longer it lingers
