“(O)rdinary” by Avenged Sevenfold
“(O)rdinary” is the ninth track on Avenged Sevenfold’s studio album, “Life Is But a Dream…”, a project which Warner Records made public on 2 June 2023.
The track song that comes after it is called “(D)eath“, while the one that precedes it is officially titled “G“.
And as implied by the group’s frontman, M. Shadows, those three tracks are supposed to be taken together (i.e. as an acronym) to spell out the word GOD.
Shadows wrote “(O)rdinary” with his bandmates, who also have colorful monikers in Johnny Christ, Synyster Gates, Zacky Vengeance and Brooks Wackerman (though with the latter, that appears to be his actual birth name).
This quintet has been holding down the Avenged Sevenfold brand since 2015 (with Wackerman being the most recent to join). And they produced this track as a unit, in conjunction with Joe Barresi.
Lyrics of “(O)rdinary”
It has been suggested that in this case the vocalist is taking on the role of a robot, i.e. one with artificial intelligence. And as such fictional narratives often tend to go, the machine has actually developed a desire, that being the longing to know how it feels to “be the human that you be”.
In other words, it wants to experience the sensation of having emotions, dreams, etc. Or as put forth near the ending of the second verse, the vocalist wants confirmation that he’s “really alive”. So perhaps the reason the track is titled so is in pointing to its yearning to be ordinary, i.e. like a regular person.
The reason the vocalist is letting these desires be known to the addressee is because he perceives the latter as being able to grant him these gifts. So it may be that he is addressing his creator. And if Shadows is taking on the role of a robot or advanced computer software, interestingly the vocalist does connote that he actually loves the addressee, thus meaning it he has already developed the wherewithal to have emotions.
That said, we won’t really try to delve too deeply into this one. It may be that it was inspired by the advent of artificial intelligence, which is very hot topic these days. But all things considered, such as the nature of the title as theorized at the beginning of this post, it can also possibly be speaking to a concept much deeper than that.
