A Caleb Lancing-Gant/Mission:2110 playlist
WARNING: PLAYLIST HEAVILY INFLUENCED BY CREATOR'S MUSIC TASTE
Behold: fourteen songs (+ 1 bonus song for fun) with justifications, all which come together to represent Caleb and his world. 58 minutes and 8 seconds of our favourite cyborg resistance leader. I hope you agree with my choices and I hope you enjoy listening!
TRACK 1 – Planet Earth by Duran Duran
I like to start playlists with an atmospheric song, and Planet Earth does a really good job of setting the scene of an Earth devoid of humans after the Roboid invasion. Lines like ‘Is there anybody out their trying to get through?’ and ‘Can you hear me now?’ always remind me of Caleb’s series 1 opening broadcast, which is a common theme in this playlist.
TRACK 2 – It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (and I feel fine) by REM
This song was mainly chosen for aesthetic reasons. It’s a song about an apocalypse, and it has a very playful tone that I think matches Caleb’s energy. Also the line ‘a tournament, a tournament, a tournament of lies’ makes a good gameshow allusion.
TRACK 3 – Radio Nowhere by Bruce Springsteen
‘Is there anybody alive out there?’ This song reminds me so much of Caleb’s opening broadcasts. Especially with the other mechanical imagery such as drones and satellites.
TRACK 4 – Catch Me If You Can by Jhariah
This song was chosen to represent five years Caleb spent hiding from the Roboidz in their own headquarters, even as they actively hunted him down. It’s again very playful and cocky, and definitely mimics the way he likes to taunt the Roboidz. Also the song's spoken lines feel very Neuros, especially with the ‘Perhaps there's a part of me in all of you’. It reminds me of the part in series 2 where she tries to convince Caleb he’s just as inhuman as she is.
TRACK 5 – 2012 by Will Wood and the Tapeworms
I really wanted a song to represent Caleb’s amnesia, as it’s a big part of his character. So I chose one by one of my favourite artists. Don't worry, it's justified! It talks about actively trying to get the memory back, which Caleb does. There’s medical imagery, and his amnesia was caused by his illness. And while 2012 isn’t quite 2110… It’s close enough, right?
TRACK 6 – Kids in the Dark by All Time Low
This is my default gameshow song and therefore ends up on most of my gameshow playlists. To me, it’s a song about kids forced to save the world when the adults failed, a song about working as a team and never giving up. I couldn’t not include it.
‘They left us alone, the kids in the dark, to burn out forever or light up a spark. We come together, state of the art. We’ll never surrender, the kids in the dark.’
TRACK 7 – Revolution Radio by Green Day
This is another aesthetic one. There’s yet more radio imagery to match his broadcasts, and this song works well with Caleb’s self-given role of resistance leader. ‘For the life that's been deleted’ is a very robot-y line as well.
TRACK 8 – Complicated by Bon Jovi
‘Is there anybody out there? Just like everybody out there. Just one somebody out there just like me?’ Another broadcast song. This one gets extra points because it’s partially sung to the narrator’s mother, and Caleb’s relationships with both Cybele and Neuros – the two halves of his mother - are very important to his character.
TRACK 9 – Cabinet Man by Lemon Demon
We’re moving on to cyborg angst songs now. ‘I'm half human and half machine’ is obviously Caleb, but the imagery of raw organs attached to machinery reminds me more of Neuros’ brain-in-a-biorod self. The songs also talks a lot about games, which works well for a gameshow. It also mentions players coming from miles away, and while it wasn’t exactly distance, the recruits certainly travelled a long way.
TRACK 10 – Oh No! by MARINA
There are lots of little lyrics snippets that work well with Caleb here. ‘I know exactly why I walk and talk like a machine’ is more cyborg angst. ‘Maybe it is all a test’ is very gameshow-y. ‘If you are not very careful, your possessions will possess you’ pretty much sums up the Roboid rebellion. There’s also a heavy theme of destiny and having to succeed because there’s no other option, which works well with Caleb being the last human. ‘I feel like I'm the worst so I always act like I'm the best’ can be used to represent how he always seems upbeat and confident, an unshakable leader, with the recruits while struggling with his identity, humanity and guilt in private.
TRACK 11 – Wired Wrong by Steam Powered Giraffe
I couldn’t have a playlist about a robot adjacent character without including a song from the singing musical automatons themselves. They obviously have quite a few songs about being a robot, but this one fit the best. ‘Mecto Amore’ is too happy. ‘Automaton Electronic Harmonics’ is too hopeful. ‘Brass Goggles’ is too specific to SPG. ‘Only Human’ feels more like a song for the Roboidz. ‘Electricity is in my Soul’ has the right level of angst, but the song is more about someone else not understanding their cybernetics rather than the self-loathing Caleb feels. So it had to be Wired Wrong.
The singer also notes that they aren’t actually wired wrong, they just feel that way, which works really well with Caleb because there isn’t actually anything sinister about his cybernetics. They’re literally just medical aids. The angst comes from the fact he doesn’t know that and jumped straight to the idea he was a rejected Roboid experiment.
Also Laura Gant is very 2000's neurodivergent coded and this song is a mood.
TRACK 12 – Rusted From the Rain by Billy Talent
I think this song really matches Caleb’s emotions at the end of series 2. There’s heavy apocalypse imagery. ‘My bitter heart is pumping oil into my veins’ reminds me of Caleb’s concern that he doesn’t "know what [he's] got inside [his] chest – a heart or a fuel pump". And ‘I’m nothing but a tin man, don’t feel any pain’ is pure cyborg angst.
TRACK 13 – And The Hound by Yaelokre
Another song that links well to the heart or fuel pump quote: 'A lost little boy who's lost his heart, fear's not enough they have to tеar him apart'. Especially as Stuart Goldsmith deliberately played into how child-like Caleb is. 'Follow the scent of iron sinking deeper into corpsеs rotting' is a remarkably fitting description of the Shades. The iron in the song refers to blood, but for Mission: 2110 this is often true for metal iron. Finally 'And the hound is humming you a lie, a lullaby' refers to Cybele, who constantly lies to Caleb for her own comfort.
TRACK 14 – Carry on Wayward Son by Kansas
This song for me perfectly sums up Caleb and Laura/Neuros/Cybele’s relationship. ‘I was soaring ever higher but I flew too high’ reflects Laura Gant’s hubris when it came to creating the Roboidz. ‘Though my mind could think, I still was a mad man’ works really well for Neuros as the brain in the jar who lost her humanity. ‘Masquerading as a man with a reason’ feeds into Caleb’s insecurities about being human enough. ‘If I claim to be a wise man, well, it surely means that I don't know’represents every time Cybele has poised herself as a guide for Caleb, yet claimed not to have information that she does in order to control him. Unrelated to Caleb and Cybele, Futuregate being a series of cargo ships fits well with ‘Tossed about, I'm like a ship on the ocean’.
But most importantly, Cybele to Caleb: ‘Carry on, my wayward son. There'll be peace when you are done’. Because she knows that only he can undo her mistakes to save the world.
BONUS TRACK – Destroy to Enjoy by Will Wood and the Tapeworms
While I was creating this playlist, I came across a debate on whether a character playlist should be songs that remind the creator of a character or songs that the character would actually listen to. This playlist is firmly in former camp, but I did stop to think for a second about the music Caleb would listen to. And I’m sorry, but this was the first song that came to mind. I know it’s two minutes of just construction sounds, but he would listen to it, wouldn’t he. He canonically doesn't even know what music is! It’s perfect for him. I’m not wrong.