KANADA THE LOOP is on a voyage of discovery in "Life On Mars"

The music video for KANADA THE LOOP’s latest single "Life on Mars" is lively and brightly colourful, it looks like it was taken from the late 90s, with a VHS-style filter and Windows 95 pop-ups glitching across the screen. KANADA, however, is a project actually born out of 2010s meme culture; a place where things don’t have to really make logical sense, as long as they’re entertaining. In fact, on closer inspection, the video is indeed reminiscent of early 2010s oddball internet favourites like Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! It’s goofy, fun, and eccentric.

Peculiarity is firmly in KANADA THE LOOP’s DNA and it’s hard to truly pin their music down in terms of sound. It comes across as a vibrant mix between Superorganism and Gym Class Heroes, with the off-the-wall quirkiness of 100 Gecs. This sonic fluidity is intentional; KANADA intends to keep people on their toes, to test the limits of pop, to play with its core characteristics and see what might happen.

The artist approaches frequently visited subjects with quirkiness and a wide-eyed sense of exploration. "Life on Mars" is “a pretty classic love song”, KANADA admits, but it’s experimental in its approach by honing in closely on one of pop music’s key tenets to deliver its message: that is, a sense of fantasy.

Like many great pop songs (take Robyn’s "Dancing on My Own", for example), "Life on Mars" is rich and vivid in its storytelling. KANADA has keenly extracted pop music’s ability to retell universal human stories in vibrant, emphatic terms, both lyrically and sonically.

The track utilises space and time as a metaphor to conjure a story of love and heartbreak which is powerful and consuming. Its imagery creates a cosmic world for the listener to escape into, all the more impactful when the track ends with KANADA singing “let’s go to the moon, that’s our kind of view!”

Aside from this, "Life on Mars" is, plainly, an earworm. It’s infectious, specifically the chorus, which has an immediate, sing-a-long quality. KANADA has good experience with pop composition, having first established himself by performing with Adelaide band Pinkish Blu before developing KANADA THE LOOP in 2021. He seems sharply aware of what makes a pop song work, and the track is a showcase for that knowledge.

Ignoring any boundaries that might be put on pop music, KANADA THE LOOP’s catalogue will be worth keeping an eye on. In terms of experimentation, for KANADA, the sky is no limit - he’s already in space, after all.