"I've Sold Myself For Property In Hell"

(NOTE: Welcome to the first Lost Ramble, be prepared to dive in. There may be some mistakes, so please be patient.)

On April 7, 2022, pop rock band Waterparks released a single titled “FUNERAL GREY.” This single sounded pretty similar to their other work, a fun guitar driven love song with pop sensibilities. However, something much bigger was going on. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY was released on April 14, 2023, after four additional singles. It was the fifth studio album by Waterparks. It made it to several number 2 slots on billboard charts, and generally had a positive-leaning mixed reception.  INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, is a sonically diverse album with a concept that’s not readily available to the average listener. The album focuses on four things: one overarching concept, a setting, and two main characters. The concept is described by the band’s lead singer and frontman, Awsten Knight, in several ways. One such explanation was featured in an Alternative Press article “There is a love story throughout the record that is expressive to and for other people, but the album itself has to do with overcoming, unlearning and growing past religious guilt” (DeCaro, “How Waterparks’ wildly eclectic INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY turns into a love story”). The setting is a place known simply as ‘The Property,’ which is generally considered to be a place of negative/intrusive thoughts and religious trauma inside Knight’s mind. And finally, the characters are two representations of Knight, though what exactly they represent is debated frequently, named Soulsucker (Soul) and Starfucker (Star). The full concept of this album, as well as what all the symbolism, characters, and story means will most likely be lost to time, however, because of the loss of the ‘other side of the story.’ 

After the full release of this album, on October 11, 2023, an additional song, “SNEAKING OUT OF HEAVEN,” was released and tacked onto the end of the album. On May 26, 2024, an additional single was released titled “SOULSUCKER.” This song came along with the announcement of the band’s sixth studio album and direct follow up, INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY 2: LOST IN THE PROPERTY, which would also feature the previously released “SNEAKING OUT OF HEAVEN.” A third single, “FAI2,” was released on June 28, 2024, and then, on August 2, 2024, the album was announced to be canceled, with one last song from it being released on August 4, 2024. 

There are so many facets to this album that require a deep understanding of Waterparks as a band and as people as well as knowledge of their previous work and common themes. A lot of this would be much harder to find without having been there at the time of all of it happening, and without access to certain accounts. The research process generally included finding sources to back up what was being said, trying to find good articles and interviews, and listening to the album on repeat. This analysis will cover the original eleven tracks of the album INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY by Waterparks in great detail, describing its themes, story, and conception, as well as going in depth on the planned sequel album, INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY 2: LOST IN THE PROPERTY, and what is known about it. 

The original eleven tracks of INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY take the listener on a journey. It begins seeming like a standard pop rock album about relationship struggles and over it’s course morphs into a story about trauma and the irreparable effects it can have on someone. The opening song to the album is “ST*RFUCKER.” The short intro track begins with tongue in cheek lyrics that take on a much more emotionally charged meaning the further down the IP rabbithole the listener goes: “I'm gonna move out of my loft / And into a limousine / So I can drive you fuckin' crazy / And crash out where I sleep, yeah / Jesus Christ won't text me back / I'll always be around, in fact.” These lines are already full of references to previous songs in the Waterparks catalog, mainly “Fuzzy” and “I’ll Always Be Around.” One line sticks out the most, “Jesus Christ won’t text me back.”  With this almost silly line, Knight has already alluded to religious trauma being a central theme.

Another line from this track that is extremely important to the album’s lore is as follows: “Maybe I'm a soul-sucker / But you're just a starfucker.” And with that, the two main characters have been introduced. While their exact nature and relationship to Knight is heavily debated, what is agreed upon is that they are personifications of different facets of his personality/mental health. These characters are both played by Awsten knight, with them having slightly different hair and makeup. Confusingly, Soul has red stars over his eyes and Star has green crosses. Soul is the main character and lens of INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, whereas it is assumed that Star would have been the same for the sequel.  

The second track is “REAL SUPER DARK,” which again features fun, silly lyrics and inside jokes. Yet it is sonically one of the darkest songs on the album. In addition to this, the lyrics that aren’t outright funny can be extremely tragic and heartbreaking. For example, “I'm out of my cage and I'm on the stage / I'm dyin' to give you a show / I'm alienated, way overrated / Here are a few of the notes / My fans are the best, they'd love me more dead.” These themes of being turned into someone you're not by others are nothing new to the band, and yet within the context of religious guilt, they hit home harder. 

The third track is the beginning of the main story of the album. “FUNERAL GREY” features Awsten/Soul fawning over a girl he barely knows. He flirts with her only to have his own efforts used against him, ending with her walking out without giving her name. In the interpretation of the characters that is being used here, the girl is Star. There are many other interpretations of the character: Soul as Knight’s true character vs Star as his rockstar persona; Soul as Knight’s trauma vs Star as the church. These are just some of many theories, but the first mentioned is the one used for this analysis. 

Star as the girl that Soul is obsessing over is extremely interesting. This is because both characters are portrayed by Knight, who is a man and has never expressed much thought publicly about being otherwise. It does make sense though, as Awsten has always written about heterosexual presenting relationships and most references to love interests in this album are the same. Therefore for the central relationship between Soul and Star to be heterosexual makes sense. This is a strong suit of the story, as it plays with gender expectations since Knight portrays both characters. The fact that this album is about religious, specifically catholic, guilt makes it that much stronger that the leads are heterosexual. By doing this, it plays with heteronormativity and the nature of their relationship as almost an expected outcome. 

“BRAINWASHED,” is heavily related to the previous song and comes directly after it. Not only are they related sonically, they have similar vibes and were the only two songs played on a cheap toy guitar Knight owned on the album, but they are also lyrically related. One commonality is the dark title juxtaposed with a more upbeat sound. Lyrically, “BRAINWASHED” seems to be about the honeymoon phase of Soul and Star’s relationship. They have gotten together and seem happy. However there’s something else going on here as well. Take the lyric “It's like my brain isn't mine, you moved into my mind / Dropped your bags, drew the blinds.” This is a reference to the song “I Felt Younger When We Met,” which has lyrics that say “I've never seen a face with your type of shine / You moved in behind my eyes and built yourself a shrine.” These songs seem very divorced from one another, with the latter being much darker and angrier and about a breakup, this seems to imply that Knight/Soul is worried his new relationship is going to go the same direction. This is also relevant to the theme of religious trauma. Brainwashing as a term is often used to refer to the indoctrination done by cults. The first half of the lyric states how his brain doesn’t feel like his own. This is also a common thread throughout the album, which he often relates back to being brought up in the catholic church and how he feels that he was brainwashed by its ideology.

Another connected aspect of this song is the sexualized nature of the  relationship in this song. Lyrics like “Everything's clean except for my thoughts / Thinkin' about me gettin' you off” are a prime example. By making Knight, and many other members, lose touch with their sexuality and see it as wrong, the church can better control them through confessions and forgiving their supposed sin. By separating the ‘sinful’ and those who ‘repent,’ the church creates an other who can be shunned and stigmatized. And when members of this church realize that they themselves are the other as well, they may try to escape. Those people may find new power in their sexuality, but this power might overtake them, causing them to fall into it as a coping mechanism or way to escape. 

The album’s fifth track is “2 BEST FRIENDS.” This song sees the relationship begin to fall apart. How exactly is unclear but whatever the case is, Soul speaks to his own struggles with finding someone else despite the relationship’s problems, “You hit back with the syntax / You treated my heart like a handbag / So now I'm solo when the night's cold / Yeah, I kissed a couple people, but they taste wrong.” 

The middle point of the album is a small break. While up to this point it’s all been energetic in one way or another, “END OF THE WATER (FEEL)” is a break from that with a more atmospheric chorus and lower energy verses. The song also seems to represent the middle point of the relationship between Soul and Star. They seem to be at a crossroads, they can try and fix things or continue to not communicate and let their relationship fall apart. What comes next is “SELF-SABOTAGE.” This song speaks to Soul’s inability to stop himself from slashing his own tires, especially in relationships, “It's avoidable, I'll destroy chances to be / Better than I was before you and me / Now we're at the part where you'll hate what you see / What the fuck is wrong with me?” The relationship is now almost completely destabilized and just needs one last push to completely fall apart. Before that can be resolved though, the narrative takes a step back. 

“RITUAL,” is both sonically and lyrically one of the darkest songs Waterparks have ever released. The song is obviously about religion, with the title alluding to religious rituals, as well as it opening with a phone conversation that features a man saying “What if I want to have sex before I get married?” to which a woman answers, “Well, I guess you just have to be prepared to die.” These voices feel very reminiscent of a religious confession. The verses open with “My inner child needs a bulletproof vest and a phone that can't text / And twenty years rest / Build a bomb shelter, bite a belt for the stress / Never know what's next, next.” These lyrics reference Knight’s trauma directly. He was brought up in the church. He wishes he could protect that child version of himself who had no say in the circumstances. Another layer to this is his need to protect his current inner child, who is being drowned out by the darkness of intrusive thoughts and trauma. This ‘darkness’ is also represented by Knight lowering his voice for the final verse and almost singing it monotone. 

Track nine is the only official feature on the album, and the first official feature on a studio album from the band. “FUCK ABOUT IT” features the artist blackbear. In his verse he sings “You've been at my crib for like the seventh day up in a row / You've been doin' silly things like checkin' who I follow / I know you waitin' by the phone, but I just wanna be all alone tonight.” His voice complement’s Knights, and his verse elaborates on the first, “I like you, but I need some space / I like you kinda far away / It's not hard to kill a day / Lookin' at your face.” This song has two main parts to it. The choruses that once again discuss oversexualizing a relationship like having sex instead of talking about their problems. The other part is the verses which go more in depth on the problems but in a superficial way. Soul’s character sings through blackbear, essentially saying that Star is being clingy and crazy by constantly calling and checking his followers. He insists he just wants some space. 

“CLOSER” begins acoustic and slowly builds over its runtime until it cuts back to the single acoustic guitar. The song occurs directly after the previous one in the timeline of the relationship, with the line “I got my space, but what did I pay for you?” paralleling Soul begging for space. Throughout this song Soul desperately tries to hang on to the relationship slipping through his fingers, and then finally accepts it. “I need you closer / Or I need it over” is repeated in every chorus. Soul needs the relationship to go back to how it was, for them to be closer again. In the verses of the song Soul thinks about how they got here,“So, yeah, I loved you or I tried to / But I don't know how / Used to need you and feel you / But we ran it all down.” In the final verse Soul accepts that it’s over, and yet he still sings us out on that same chorus, almost as if to say that this isn’t the last that will be seen of him or Star. 

The short first verse of the final track, “A NIGHT OUT ON EARTH,” ends with the lyrics “Desensitized, the love I get is virtual / Now Jesus hates my guts, it's gettin' personal.” Digital praise not meaning real love is a repeated concept throughout Waterparks songs across most major releases. It then ties back to the theme of religion which bookends the line in “ST*RFUCKER.” The song is chock full of references to Knight’s personal life, previous songs, and even ends with the first ever radio appearance of Waterparks and two of its core members. 

However, this is not the end. The four released tracks from the now scrapped album of INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY 2: LOST IN THE PROPERTY had a lot of interesting themes of their own. The paradoxical ‘secret promotion’ for this album involved cryptic private instagram posts saying “There are two sides to every story,” and comments on said posts from Knight himself replying “🔑to album - perspectives.” The first single released from this album, “SNEAKING OUT OF HEAVEN,” is on the surface an electronic pop rock love song. It was released, like “FUNERAL GREY,” before the announcement of the album. In addition to being released as a single it was inexplicably added as the 12th track on IP. It was never officially announced this track would feature on the new album, but it is on the official tracklist given to critics, music magazines, and on a shirt worn in a short video. It holds the same spot on the album as “FUNERAL GREY,” which could be considered its sister track. They are not directly related, with the lyrics of “SNEAKING OUT OF HEAVEN” being closer to that of “BRAINWASHED,” even using the word brainwashed in several lyrics. However, its track placement is very important, as it would come after FAI2, which ends on the lyric “I guess I'll see you later, see you later.” That song's ending informs a lot of the reading of this song in terms of its story relevance.

“SNEAKING OUT OF HEAVEN” is a fast paced song. It has synths, electric guitars, and a driving pop drumline. It is very different in these ways from “FUNERAL GREY,” which while upbeat, has little to no synths, the toy guitar, and more standard drums. The lyrical content has surface level similarities, obsession, flirtiness, and love, but the vibes are just slightly off. Star’s lyrics feel almost as if she is trying to convince herself everything is fine. She is desperate to have Soul anyway she can, and is boarding on obsessive. This is coming off of FAI2, where it seems the two are on the rocks and sex is all that is keeping them together. It continues those themes with some of the first lyrics being “Highkey, when we fuck / I feel like I'm struck / By your lightning / They say I'm brainwashed / Yeah, I might be.” These themes again go back to the gender roles of these characters. As the more feminine or  outright female character, Star has a lot of pressure on her to conform to the insane roles society has, and can be seen struggling with this. There’s a concept in modern culture that if a woman has no sex she’s a prude, but if she has a lot, she’s a whore. Star in FAI2 tells Soul to go fuck himself instead of having sex, but then seems to resign to it and here is excited about it. Unless that is part of her convincing herself that this is what she wants and not reality. 

“SOULSUCKER,” released along with the official announcement of the new album. It’s a reimagined version of “ST*RFUCKER,” using the same chorus and similar verse structures. The lyrics and even musical elements of this track make so many connections it’s hard to list them all. The most important is the lyrics from the second verse, “One of us will end up hurt / But you can call me Starfucker.” Sung to the almost exact same melody as the line about him being a soulsucker in the first album. In addition to this, the track uses the same toy guitar as “FUNERAL GREY” and “BRAINWASHED,” the same deep monotone voice for a section as “RITUAL,” and lyrics that relate to countless other songs off INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY. It even opens with “We never made it out of the loft, let alone the property,” solidifying that ‘The Property’ is not just a concept, but the setting of this story. 

This second single is titled “FAI2” and features the artist Zeph. It features many of the same vocal patterns, melodies, and lyrics as “FUCK ABOUT IT,” but almost all of it, even the structure of the song, is modified. The song starts with a chorus instead of the verse and layers on electronic elements, vocal effects, and distortions over three repeats of it. The lyrics are almost entirely the same until after the first verse. The second chorus is sung by the featured artist, Zeph, and leads into her verse. This verse is a direct parallel to and commentary on blackbear’s verse in the original song. Blackbear/Soul’s verse makes surface level complaints, diminishes Star’s actions as “silly,” and says he just wants space. In response, Zeph/Star says “All of this space is suffocating / You suck at communicating / You're so busy isolating / Craving you's excruciating.” Her lyrical content is heavier emotionally, ending it with “You wanna fuck about it? Go fuck yourself!” allows for a much deeper exploration of the relationship. In addition to all this, the stereotypes of each response are used powerfully. The man dismisses the woman’s feelings, calling her crazy. Whereas she explains her reasoning, “overthinking,” and is far more emotionally charged than him. While IP1 may be androcentric, IP2 is anything but. It takes every aspect of the story the listener thinks they know and flips them. 

Despite there being a full tracklist featuring two more sequel songs, and leaks of the penultimate track “RESOLC,” the album was canceled due to mental health reasons and it feeling “cursed.” In the instagram post that announced this, Knight stated the following, "Living in the PROPERTY world for 3 years now and constantly being in the headspace of re-approaching my issues with religion is very unhealthy and continues to take its toll on my mental wellbeing. The idea of having to follow through with a full rollout, multiple tours for it, and keep living in that place sounds daunting and I’d rather take a beat and reapproach the next Waterparks album with love rather than fear and bad energy." A few days later, this was coupled with the release of the last song from this album to date, along with a short film to accompany it. 

This song, “GUILT (INTERLUDE),” was never meant to be a single. It was originally set to be the midpoint of the album, and while we cannot know what, if anything, was changed for the release as a single, it is an instrumental track with a female robotic voice over it. This voice speaks directly, without any fancy metaphors or separating layers, to the audience about religious guilt and trauma. “Religious guilt is the name placed on learned trauma through the teachings of the church. From an early age, these institutions instill ideas in you that your interests, your natural feelings, and even who you are as a person, are inherently wrong, and that at the end of your life, you will face punishment for who you are and the feelings you were born with.” She ends her speech with a simple idea “Everybody is a god, once you make it out of the property.” While we may never know the full story, this seems a fitting ending to what was given, as a way to escape The Property.