It all started with an actual encounter: Scoopski was, indeed, stopped at a red light when someone rolled down their window and flipped him the bird for no apparent reason. This was in northeast Philadelphia or thereabouts, so it might have been the equivalent of a nod or a wave. I grew up there, so I’m kind of used to these things. So did Scoopski, more or less, so you’d think he’d think nothing of it, but you’d be wrong. He not only thought something of it. He turned it into a song about flying off to Mars.
I’m not exaggerating when I say that “Elon, Send Me to Mars” is a work of unassuming genius. The comma in the title alone is enough to warrant praise. I just spent the morning grading Freshman Composition papers, so I can say with some degree of certainty that most people don’t know how to use a comma—and that my efforts aren’t helping to solve the problem at all. More to the point, I never see anyone use a comma in an instance of direct address in a text or a Tweet (or an X, or whatever it’s called these days). So, right off the bat, Scoopski is signaling that he knows what he’s doing.
Of course, genius is more than a matter of knowing where to stick a comma. It’s knowing where to stick everything, and Scoopski does.
Take, for example the song’s introduction. Yes, he stuck it at the beginning of the song where one might expect, but it serves a purpose. The intro (muso-speak for “introduction,” by the way) is twenty-five seconds long and consists of a synth pad and a floating theremin line followed by a guitar riff that prefigures the dominant themes of the song. More than a mere overture, however, it sends a signal to the listener: we’re leaving the real world for a fantastic fictional one, a world where anything can happen. It’s as if “Elon, Send Me to Mars” has its own theme song—like it’s a sitcom or a Saturday morning cartoon.
From there, the song builds steadily. We have the cartoon version of Scoopski sitting at a red light when some jerk decides to randomly give him the finger. At this point, all we have by way of accompaniment is a rhythm guitar and a kick drum. A few lines later, a synth and a bass line come in. If you ever make it out to see Scoopski play live, that’ll be me on bass. I mention this not to brag, but to let you know that I’m slightly biased. And to brag. Yeah, I play bass in Scoopski the Band.
And so cartoon Scoopski begins to lament his lot in life: “What can I do? What can I say? Nothing seems to go my way. I’ve gotta find a better place. Another ball of gas is calling my name.” Up to this point, the drum kit is still limited to the kick. The full kit is about to kick in with the pre-chorus, but before it does, let’s linger on that last line: “Another ball of gas is calling my name.”
1 Note from Scoopski: Could've been, but pretty sure it wasn't. And by “pretty sure” I mean 100%.
Hmm. Ball of gas? Hang on a second. Mars isn’t a ball of gas like some of the other planets in our solar system. Like Earth, it consists of a molten core surrounded by silicates—i.e. rock. And Scoopski knows this. Well, real Scoopski does anyway. But that’s exactly why real Scoopski has cartoon Scoopski suggest that both Mars and Earth are balls of gas (he does, after all, describe Mars as another ball of gas). He’s signaling to us that this narrator – this cartoon version of Scoopski – is mildly misinformed and perhaps somewhat naïve, as, indeed, are many acolytes of a certain billionaire with plans to colonize Mars while bankrupting major social media platforms. To put it bluntly, cartoon Scoopski is not real Scoopski. He’s real Scoopski’s hapless doppelganger.
Okay. Now we’re ready for the drums to kick in.
(In case you haven’t noticed, things are happening in stages. Kind of like, oh, I don’t know… Maybe a rocket launch?)
Like I said, the full drum kit comes in with the pre-chorus, and it happens exactly one minute into a four-minute song. That’s the kind of move that takes a bit of guts. I mean, seriously. The song doesn’t really get going until 25% of the way through. Who does that?
Scoopski does it, motherfuckers. Deal with it.
But we’re not ready to shoot into space yet. We still have some dreaming to do. And some planning. And maybe a little bit of begging—or possibly praying.
The pre-chorus informs us that cartoon Scoopski is planning to make a big move. Just where to remains a minor mystery—unless of course you’ve seen the title of the song on the track list—but when the chorus kicks in, none of that matters. We’re in the full frenzy of the song at this point, so all we can do it strap in and try to follow cartoon Scoopski’s cartoon logic: “Elon send me to Mars/Because life is just too bizarre/For me on Earth, so send me up to the stars/In an Electric car, yeah!/Oh, I’m putting my faith in you.”
For the most part, the poor guy’s plea makes sense. Earth is shitty, people give him the finger here for no reason, so yeah, why not ask a billionaire to send him to Mars? Of course, there’s one weird detail: He wants to fly to Mars in an electric car.
Okay, sure, real Scoopski had to mention an electric car at that point because A) that’s what Elon Musk was originally known for and B) it rhymes with Mars. Even so, there’s something else going on here. That initial misunderstanding about the composition of Mars is being compounded by an additional misunderstanding about how to get there. This guy – cartoon Scoopski, as I’ve been calling him, though he’s drifting further and further from real Scoopski by the second – thinks he's going to fly to Mars in a Tesla!
On the off chance that this all sounds slightly ridiculous, the forward momentum of the song cools off a little bit with cartoon Scoopski’s profession of faith in Elon Musk: the full drum kit returns to just the kick, while the synth an bass drop out completely. Which makes perfect sense insofar as the whole “finger” incident has passed, and cartoon Scoop has had a chance cool off a bit. Sure, he fantasized about going to Mars, but…
Oh, wait. More trouble.
No sooner has cartoon Scoopski started to cool off than he finds himself in another pickle. This time around, he’s wading a little too deeply into a social-media scuffle, and his fuse is understandably getting shorter, as demonstrated by the fact that full band kicks in much sooner than it did the first time around. The result is a subtle shift in the song’s dynamics that proves above all that real Scoopski likes to keep his listeners on their toes.
By turns, cartoon Scoopski’s fantasy about life on Mars grows increasingly ridiculous: “I’ll have a home, a Martian maid,” he declares at one point, admitting shortly thereafter that his plan is “kinda crazy.”
Ever the voice of reason—both in the cartoon world of the song and in the real world—Mrs. Scoopski chimes in with a simple but certainly practical question: “Tell me what’re you gonna do?”
Not surprisingly, cartoon Scoopski’s answer is anything but practical: “I’m strapping on my space suit.”
Where he got the space suit is anyone’s guess, but we’re back into the chorus too soon to worry about it. But now things are a little bit different. Strapped into his space suit, there’s no turning back—and definitely no chance that cartoon Scoopski will calm down.
And so instead of dropping out, the full band doubles down on the momentum of the song, launching (pun intended) into a post-chorus that helps to explain why people like this fall in line behind lunatics like the Wizard of X.
“When the planet turns its back on you/Occupy Mars and start anew,” he sings, somewhat perversely evoking the occupy movement of the early 2010s, revealing the pain and isolation he’s already feeling. The guy feels like the whole planet has turned its back on him. He’s alone and hurt, so, yeah, why not sign up for a mission to a desolate rock 140 million miles away?
2 Scoopski: Definitely wasn't just trying to come up with something to rhyme with “stars,” ended up with "car," and thus added "electric" before it. Nope!
3 Scoopski: I'll pretend just for the sake of it that this part wasn't just the result of a mixing/editing mishap. We'll go with it!
But here the band drops out one last time for cartoon Scoop to either change his mind or gather his momentum. Needless to say, he chooses the latter.
“I’ve got all of my belongings and plenty of things to do,” the poor fellow explains, suggesting that he’s packed far more than a trip to Mars will allow for—and that he’s also bringing along a few activities to keep from getting bored. A Sudoku book, perhaps. Or maybe a paint-by-numbers set.
“If they’ve got a gift shop up there/I’ll send a postcard to you,” he continues, in what is both a great rhyme but an expert portrait of a deeply-disturbed individual who has become completely untethered from reality.
And that’s the whole point of the song—or at least a big part of the point. It’s a slightly exaggerated character-sketch of the kinds of people who imagine they really can make a life for themselves on Mars and a not-exaggerated-at-all depiction of the alienated yet delusional mindset of so many people who’ve lost themselves in the mirror-world of social media and conspiracy theories.
But wait… There’s more!
After inviting Mrs. Scoopski to visit him on Mars someday (as if visiting Mars is as simple as visiting New Jersey, for example), cartoon Scoopski tells her to stand back as he counts down and the rocket engines ignite. Or maybe it’s just a car engine. It’s hard to say, which also suggests that we may not be in the presence of the most reliable narrator we’ve ever met. Also worth noting: if it is a car engine, it’s a little too loud to be an electric car.
Vehicular concerns aside, the countdown speaks to the song’s lineage. To my mind, it’s an echo of the countdown in David Bowie’s “Space Oddity,” and as the rocket shoots off into space and the band cuts the tempo in half, the song takes on a weightless quality that echoes the dreamy instrumental bridge of the Bowie tune.
But the pace picks up again as cartoon Scoopski warns us to hold on because “It’s gonna get rocky.” Apparently we’re in the ship with him. Or the car. Or the car inside the space ship, which is, weirdly, the most plausible likelihood since we know that Elon Musk did, in fact, send a Tesla into space because… Well… He could?
4 Scoopski: You get it!
5 Scoopski: We'll pretend I wasn't going for the post-bridge chorus of “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” by Good Charlotte. Your analysis is definitely cooler, so that's officially what it is. Yep!
And like Major Tom in “Space Oddity,” cartoon Scoopski ain’t coming back. After all, the planet has turned its back on him, and he’s ready to start anew. Plus that otherworldly theremin is back, reminding us, perhaps, of that other famous theremin, the one in the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations.” Which, in a weird way, might also be part of this track’s pedigree—the different sections, the dynamic shifts, the fact that both went to number one on the Billboard charts.
Anyway, I’m sure Scoopski is going to do that thing all geniuses do, especially the unassuming variety. He’s going to look down and bashfully shuffle his feet and act like all of the above was just an accident—that none of it was planned and that I might be reading into a little much. But rest ye assured, it’s just an act. Every single detail was planned in advance right down to the moment I rolled up next to him at a red light and flipped him the bird.
6 Scoopski: You’re a genius.