Chords for What's The Deal With In The Aeroplane Over the Sea?

And the Aeroplane Over The Sea is regarded as one of the best lo-fi indie albums of all time.
However, on the surface, it doesn't seem like this album should be regarded so highly.
This album combines a bunch of fuzzy production that literally sounds like it was recorded [Ab] on
a plane sometimes with this [F] guy who is very vocally untrained just singing about Anne Frank or whatnot.
But when you dive deeper into this album, you'll understand why so many people emotionally
resonate with it.
This album is the cause of just so many memes on the internet.
And it's also the reason why a lot of people believe that this guy right here
is an actual time traveler.
[Bb] What the hell [F] is the deal with In The [Em] Aeroplane Over The Sea?
_ _ _ [C] _ _
_ _ _ Obviously, this album was like critically acclaimed.
It got a 10 out of 10 on Pitchfork.
It's the number one album of 1998 on Rate Your Music, an album of the year,
and probably every other website that talks about music.
And if you haven't listened to this album,
I highly recommend that you do.
But you know, watch this video first.
It's also one of my favorite albums of all time.
So, the story of Neutral Milk Hotel,
the short and sweet version of it is that this guy named Jeff Mangum, Jeff [C] Mangum,
this guy named Jeff just went to a bunch of other people and was like, hey, let's make a band.
[G] And then so all these weirdos [B] got together and they [E] made a band.
They made one [G] album,
and they made this album.
This is the album I'm going to talk about today.
I think the reason why it's so popular and so influential and just so great is for three
factors, okay?
You got the instrumentation, you got the lyrics, you got the internet.
First off, let's talk about the instrumentation, okay?
On paper and on surface, like this
album is super simple.
I guarantee you that if you've been [Em] playing guitar for three months,
you can play [Ab] pretty much any song on this album.
I think the complexity lies in the [E] amount of
instrumental variety there is when it comes to different instruments.
Did you know some dude
plays the saw on this album?
Like the saw that you cut wood with.
Some [C] dude's taking like a violin,
bowed to a saw, and going to town on it.
I don't know many albums that have a saw being played in
the album.
And there's a bunch of other weird instruments in this thing.
Like there's accordions
in this thing, there's [Bb] some bagpipes in this [C] thing, there's this thing called a flugelhorn,
whatever a flugelhorn is.
A lot of weird instruments.
Like I said, a dude's playing a
saw on this album.
And so [Bb] all of this makes it a very instrumentally diverse album because each
song I think has its own unique factor to it.
You got some nice soft songs with Jeff playing on his
acoustic [Bm] guitar, [C] wailing with his voice.
And then you got other songs that are just [E] complete loud,
fuzzy messes, but in the best [N] possible way.
Another thing that's really great about this
album is that each song flows very well together.
The whole structure of this album is incredible.
From front to back, you are transported into this world that Jeff and crew, Jeff and company,
has made for the listener to experience.
And a big part of that lies in our second factor here,
the lyrics.
From the very opening line of this album, Jeff paints a picture.
You are not only
listening, but you are experiencing and viewing the story in your own eyes.
There's so many
different themes in this album.
Religious themes, obviously.
Depression, I mean, it's lo-fi indie rock.
You gotta throw some depression themes in there.
There's domestic abuse themes.
There's themes about
like incest maybe?
I don't know.
All packaged so well together.
And I think the best part about this
album is that there can be multiple interpretations about what this album means.
There is a one-hour
long lecture on YouTube.
This [Db] dude talked about the lyrics and the meaning of this album [D] for an
hour long.
I only got halfway through it because I got bored.
Go to Genius and you'll find so many
[Bb] different meanings and interpretations of this album.
And I haven't even gotten to like the
biggest part about this album.
That's the fact that a good old Anne Frank here was a big influence on
it.
So you might know the story.
If you don't, here it is.
Jeff went and read Dyer of Anne Frank,
cried for three days, fell asleep, and he had a lot of dreams of her and her family kind of
watching over him.
So he felt very emotionally connected to Anne Frank.
He wrote a lot about
Anne Frank in this album.
There's a [Ab] lot of themes of Anne Frank in this album.
There's a lot of
weird people on the internet that say that like [D] Jeff wants to like_
[N] There's a lot of weird theories
about this album on the internet.
I think this album is more about the emotional connection that
Jeff had with Anne Frank while reading that book.
Just the amount of like depression that he felt
of like that lost of life and like the loss of potential that happened with Anne Frank because
of everything that was happening at the time period that she was growing up.
And I think that
is more the direction that Jeff was going towards with this album.
Speaking of Anne Frank and weird
theories, that brings me to my third point.
The internet.
The internet has had a field day with
this album.
There's so many memes about this album.
You know 4chan?
Everyone knows 4chan.
You know,
they did some wacky stuff.
And the 4chan board, MU, it's like the music board for 4chan, they
really just had a field day for this album.
Some dude literally made [F] a rap album out of this album.
[A] He combined a bunch of rap songs and this album.
But there's one thing in particular that I want
to talk about and that is the time travel theory.
Obviously, Jeff had a huge emotional connection to
Anne Frank and was upset over that loss of life.
So people did some digging, okay?
They found Jeff's
old high school [N] yearbook and in that high school yearbook, they found his sister, Caroline.
Apparently, according to 4chan users, had a shocking resemblance to Anne Frank.
4chan's
theory was that Jeff Mangum developed a time machine to go back in time and save Anne Frank.
He brought her back to like the 70s when he went to high school, told everyone that she was his
sister, and then they eventually got married because apparently Jeff's wife also looks like
Anne Frank.
People were picking out like lyrics and the album that like suggested that was a real
thing or whatever.
No one knows where Jeff is these days.
He's kind of high these days.
He's
not really in the public eye a lot.
Someone was like, maybe it's not [Gb] where is he, it's when is he.
Despite all of this, there's still a lot of people who enjoy this album.
And I took to Reddit and I
asked Reddit users what did they think about this album and why did they connect with this album so
well.
I think Reddit user Caleb Dude did a great job describing why everyone loves this album.
Reddit user _ _ OjoesDVideotape did a fantastic job at describing why this album is so fantastic and
why it resonates emotionally with people.
He says that it lies in the sincerity of the album.
Anyone
who ever tried to write a song can say one of the hardest [F] parts of it is to be sincere with yourself
and not be ashamed of what [G] you write.
And by this I mean not [A] being able [C] to be honest with [Dm] yourself.
I know as a previous songwriter myself, I have definitely felt this.
Jeff overcame this when he
wrote In the Aeroplane [G] Over the Sea and I think that's a [A] perfect way [C] of describing why [F] this album
is just so incredible and so amazing.
If you haven't listened [A] to this album, go ahead and
listen to this album.
You will do yourself a huge favor by doing that.
Thank you for watching.
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