Goodbye to a World (commentary) Songtext
von Porter Robinson

Goodbye To A World is- is a contender
For my favorite song of the album
Um, I remember- I- it was the first time that I′d tried to work with
Sound- like, soundfonts and N64-type sounds
And write stuff that was really channelling
Um, you know, my nostalgia from- from the early-2000s
Late 90s, and- and games in that vain
And there was a huge enormous thunderstorm outside
It was like a windstorm
It was one of those days where, like
The sky turns green, you know?
And a huge tree had collapsed over, uh, my- my- my driveway
And so there was no getting out of the house
And, um, it was just pouring, pouring down rain, wind was-
You know, the power was cutting out
That was the atmosphere that I had
When I wrote Goodbye To A World
Um, a-and how perfect is it that it was, like, apocalyptic outside?
It's just so crazy to me
I mean, maybe that informed the title


And- and theme of the song
But this is another, you know
Another song with a- a- a robot vocal
And um, yeah, I mean, I think-
I think if you listen to it, the-
The message is pretty- pretty upfront
Um, it′s- you know, to me
It's very clearly a sad- a sad song
But th- this- this notion of, um, world destruction
Or a world disappearing, is- is really dear to me
Um, I've talked about it in interviews before
But I was very much attached to these online worlds
And MMORPGs like World of Warcraft-type stuff
I was really into a- a game called Star Wars: Galaxies
Another one called City of Heroes
And the thing about these games is that
When an online role-playing game
That millions of people are connected to goes away
When- when the game ceases to be profitable
And the servers shut down
It′s not like other games where, ten years down the line you can just-
You can just plug in the cartridge
And- and- and- and bask in the nostalgia, it′s not like that
Once those games are gone, those worlds
That you very much immersed yourself in are gone
And that was a big deal to me when my favorite games disappeared
And I couldn't go there anymore
And as an adult now, I think it′s just a very kind of romantic notion
And, um, that- that- that's why I think the whole idea of, like
A beautiful apocalypse is really evocative to me
I love that, um
And, you know, this isn′t a zombie death thing here
This is- this is, like, pretty, you know?
This is a beautiful world kind of disappearing in a clean way
That's sort of how I see it