Have you ever experienced something that moved you so profoundly,
but was near impossible to explain to anyone?
A brief shining moment of beauty that was impossible to capture?
It’s this particular emotion that resounds with fans of SoGreatAndPowerful.
SoGreatandPowerful was an independent musician whose brief presence online
attracted a very small but dedicated following.
While the content of his music and blog posts were what sparked the initial interest in his audience,
his mysterious disappearance that followed soon afterward
is what truly bound his fan community together
and has kept it alive to this day.
This is the story of SoGreatandPowerful.
Describing SoGreatandPowerful’s music can be a little challenging,
so I spoke to some of his fans to get an impression of what their experiences were.
BOBY: Alright, hit me up with those questions, what's up?
DANIEL: Alright, so first question is
How would you describe SGaP to someone who has never heard of him?
BOBY: I don't really know how to describe it. It's extremely difficult to describe without actually
listening to it because I think it's so unique, you know?
This is like the hardest question you could possibly ask me so…
DANIEL: Wow, okay. I'm gonna not start with that next time.
DMC: As we all know, his music is very peculiar,
very one-of-a-kind for many things.
It’s not easy to pinpoint a genre or style.
RON: It's something that's hard to categorize or define,
just because you don't fully understand it the first time you encounter it.
So it’s something that you have to get to know over time.
BOBY: Very few musicians are able to like actually like take me somewhere else,
just solely through their music.
And that's like one of the things that drew me to him.
And that’s one of the things that I can describe
that’s pretty unique about his music is that like
It's extremely atmospheric, and like every time I listen to it it's just
I'm like taken away to somewhere else, you know.
EMBER: I described it before, just
music that's really dense with rhythms and lots of sound design, but it still
kinda maintains this soft air, this soft tone overtop of everything.
And that sometimes he writes some really interesting
or cute or lighthearted lyrics on top of it,
with this really kind sounding voice.
It’s a real wholesome experience,
but it’s still super interesting and exciting to listen to at the same time.
Among the most identifying of SGAP's musical style
is his intriguing use of borrowing and employing
audio samples from a variety of sources,
including, TV, film, and other musicians.
Among the most notable of his influences however, was surprisingly enough
the My Little Pony franchise.
In 2010, My Little Pony had just been rebooted
with a new TV series.
It was getting a lot of attention – not just from children, but adults too.
An online community was forming surrounding this show,
and soon fan art and music inspired by My Little Pony
became widely popular online.
Inspired by this flourishing online creativity, SoGreatandPowerful created
his first song in October 2011, and uploaded it to his YouTube channel.
It was named 'Flutterwonder' and it was a musical reinterpretation of a song from
the My Little Pony Friendship is Magic TV series,
featuring an original music video made from clips from the cartoon.
After it was well received, SoGreatandPowerful
continued creating songs in like manner,
in order to complete what became his first album, The Standard Model.
It highlighted themes from the cartoon
such as friendship, community, and creativity.
RON: If I were to describe SoGreatandPowerful to someone who had never heard of them,
I would start by talking about this show called My Little Pony.
And SoGreatandPowerful is a musician inspired by that show
who thrives off of the layers and layers of meaning that it has.
EMBER: I would describe it to my friends as, like yeah
he takes clips from a My Little Pony show,
but then like integrates it in original music,
and then makes something really interesting out of it.
It’s really -- it’s something else.
DMC: He has lots of influences,
and I think MLP only happens to be one of them.
And in some songs it may be a major influence, in other songs,
not so much -- not as much.
In his second album, titled ‘S2’,
SoGreatandPowerful began to write about more diverse topics.
This became the first time he introduced his own vocals,
rather than his previous style of voice-clip splicing.
Now with the freedom of his own lyrics,
he was able to express himself through quoting philosophers and poets.
Though on the surface the music was still about characters from My Little Pony,
he often used them as a starting point, where he would then explore deeper concepts.
EMBER: From space pony onwards -- he stops sampling the shows directly,
and starts just kinda writing about them,
and creating his own original compositions.
DMC: In ‘space pony’ for example,
he explores many-many themes regarding afterlife,
or the unknown, or the infinite, or many themes such as those ones.
But those have very little to do with generation one MLP characters.
That’s not something easy to explain to someone who’s not familiar with him
or with MLP especially, because
they see MLP ‘cause that’s the surface,
that’s the facade.
And they see that and they go
“Oh okay, this is all about that, isn’t it?”
But it’s really not the case.
RON: Like, the first time I listened to it,
I was thinking,
“I don’t really understand what this was saying.”
But then,
when I listened to it again, after doing all the “extra learning”
that you have to do to understand some of the messages he wove in,
It was really satisfying, being like,
“Oh my gosh. This is what it means.”
DMC: ‘E48’ came out on August,
23rd August of 2012, and that's when I noticed.
And I remember listening to it, but not really getting it, I think?
Like I thought it was kind of weird for --
It didn’t really get me, you know, from the get go.
Like there are some requirements
to immediately understand that kind of music.
EMBER: I have a vivid memory of, like,
sitting in my bedroom with my iPod Touch,
under the blankets with my lava lamp on in the background,
and just listening to ‘galaxy’ over and over again.
and that kind of, like, intensity -- but remaining soft and gentle,
spoke to me,
but also seemed like I wasn't gonna find that kind of sound anywhere else
no matter how hard I tried.
BOBY: Like when I first found him
there were lots of long nights where I would just stay up in my bed
listening to his music just like over and over and over again.
Playing the songs I was really into, just over and over again
or like the EPs or whatever
And uh --
I think that was in like a time in my life where
I didn't really like have a lot of friends or like --
anyone to really talk to or connect to.
I would really just stay up and do nothing but just like listen to SGaP.
It really like genuinely helped me through that time, I think.
While the content of SGaP's uploads were unique,
perhaps more notable was his disposition towards his work.
By 2011, SoGreatandPowerful’s first album, ‘The Standard Model’
in its entirety was made available on his YouTube channel.
But then, to the surprise of his fans, he unlisted it,
essentially hiding every one of his songs, except the most recent.
From here on out, this became a regular pattern.
With each new upload, the previous would be unlisted.
DMC: So he started unlisting most of his videos.
And I remember at one point, there was just
almost the entire channel was quote-unquote “gone”.
And so people already started like
making YouTube playlists for all of SGaPs stuff,
[laughter] so that people could still
get to them indirectly.
Because his followers began to anticipate the loss
of his work, several individuals began to create public storage archives.
These greatly helped the following to thrive, with open access to his hidden media,
as well as making it easily accessible for newcomers.
Towards the end of his second album ‘S2’, he said
“I appreciate the support very, very much but, I honestly don't like these songs either.
“Hence why I hid them. I'm not proud of them.”
RON: When I create something,
part of my reason for creating it
is that I want to leave proof of myself.
Proof of things that I found beautiful, or things that I was interested in.
So then, you have this
artist like SoGaP, who creates something, but then --
Something that would have been like a beautiful proof of himself and his ideas,
And then right after he creates it, he deletes it.
I just wonder, like what is the ambition of an artist like that?
In order to explain this attitude toward his own work,
it is worth looking more closely at the name he chose to be known by.
The phrase “so great and powerful”
is a direct reference to a character
in one of the early ‘My Little Pony Friendship is Magic’ episodes.
‘Trixie’ was a unicorn with a huge ego,
who boasted about having magic superior to anyone else.
“Watch in awe as the Great and Powerful Trixie
”Performs the most spectacular feats of magic ever witnessed by pony eyes!”
By the end of the episode however,
it was revealed that Trixie was nothing but a fraud and a hoax.
”Well I can't, I never have. No one can vanquish an Ursa Major.”
“I just made the whole story up to make me look better.”
The Great and Powerful Trixie's name is itself a reference to The Wizard of Oz.
While on a surface level,
the SoGreatandPowerful alias may look boastful,
it could actually be an expression of humility, or even self-doubt.
Around the middle of 2013,
shortly after the release of his single, RD / RA,
SGaP took the unprecedented step of outright deleting a lot of his songs.
It was around this time that he said
“My goal is to make something so good,
you'll not miss those which I just simply do not like.”
Up until late 2013, SGaP had
used multiple Tumblr blog aliases,
such as SoGreatandPowerful, horseness, and unmakeablelove.
He'd been using these for quite a while, and it was well known
that he would usually delete his posts after a day or two.
In his blogs, SGaP would often discuss the concept
of an ‘empty set’ -- a mathematical term referring
to a collection that contains nothing.
For such a contemplative person, full of rich ideas,
the concept of ‘nothing’ seemed to fascinate him,
and it eventually became his identifying aesthetic.
He used the ‘empty set’ symbol as his signature across social media.
He also created a character called Null,
which became something like an avatar to represent himself and his ideals.
As a more personal visualization, most fan artwork of SGaP features Null.
Shortly after SGaP deleted many of his songs
He also deleted all of the HTML elements from his blogs.
They were just blank white pages.
He never explained why,
He just went totally silent.
And like that he remained.
His fans had been used to the idea of his content being absent,
and while saddened that it seemed there wouldn't be any more,
accepted that things have come to an end.
Nearly three years later, on April 15th, 2016,
SoGreatandPowerful posted this message on his Tumblr.
Despite this clear directive,
most fans agreed that removing the archives was
not something they'd be willing to do.
And so they remained.
BOBY: I don’t -- I don’t get it, you know?
I don’t get why he stopped making music
and I don’t think he stopped making music
I don’t get why he like
just dissed all of his fans and just left everyone.
I don't understand it.
I don't know.
I think -- I think he's just
I honestly think he's just like
I think he's just an asshole dude.
Sorry there's a little girl walking by.
Alright. Wow.
And that’s
that’s not gonna stop me from listening to his music.
EMBER: I think the most invested I got
was actually after he deleted a lot of his stuff.
by having SoGreatandPowerful’s music deleted,
and then having to take that extra step to go and find it,
that definitely helped kick-start me into
trying to work harder to find interesting music,
because I knew that it was out there now,
It was just not as easy to find, because the underground music niches,
and the general underground music scene is, like, pretty huge,
if you’re just looking somewhere on the internet for good music.
DMC: As it was -- like,
let’s say he wouldn’t have deleted anything.
Like, the channel was still full of all of his stuff,
none of it is deleted, none of -- none of it is unlisted, it’s all there,
But he's just not posting.
And I would say that
In January 2017,
one of SoGreatandPowerful’s previously unused blog aliases,
MirrorsForPrinces, posted a song.
It was the first direct message from the artist since his disappearance
nearly a year and a half before.
Once again, he'd begun posting music, sharing quotes, poetry,
and communicating directly with fans.
By this point it was clear SGaP
had adopted the new alias ‘Mirrors for Princes‘,
in an attempt to distance himself from the past.
His fans, then anticipating his content's
eventual self-deletion, as he had before,
reacted by creating a dedicated
subreddit and a new public archive separate from his previous one.
In turn, the Mirrors for Princes alias was wiped, and eventually deleted.
The absence of SoGreatandPowerful seems to have left his fans searching
for a meaningful community surrounding his music.
EMBER: I think it was sort of around when that happened, when he deleted stuff,
and he was starting up Unmakeablelove, and I started
like, “Wait, all this cool music that I really liked is now gone?”
I kind of wanted to really search for it, and try to find it wherever I could.
So, I think around then is sort of when I first turned to
Finding online communities of people who had liked his music.
RON: The people you talk to
are kind of like a required part of actually getting it, you know?
It's more something that you need like a community to actually appreciate.
DMC: In some posts he made
he was really talking about the theme of community, and
how much community meant to him,
and how he was making stuff for the community,
not only for himself, because he wanted to be
a part of that community.
He was feeling like being a part of that community was
kind of ‘magic’, you could say or ‘special’.
And so he wanted to be a part of that special thing.
And I think he succeeded.
I don't know if he feels like he did.
The SGaP fanbase still exists today. Dormant, but certainly not dead.
It is survived through the activities of a dedicated Tumblr blog, subreddit, and
Discord server.
His fans have most notably contributed a wide variety of
fan artwork, song covers, original music videos, animations,
and even a compilation album called Sori 52.
of original songs dedicated to his legacy.
DMC: If you had to do an estimate
how many people around the world are listening nowadays
to SGaP's music right now.
I mean, a thousand person tops?
Two thousand? Maybe?
In the whole world?
BOBY: I don’t know if you remember this
but since the Skype group,
I've always like offered people to meet up with me.
A couple of times I was like
“This is literally like the highway that I'm on right now”
“Come meet me at a rest stop.”
Every single time I said it I was always like genuine
about wanting to meet up with people and like
It finally happened. [laughter]
DANIEL: Yeah. BOBY: It's kinda crazy.
‘Cause like meeting Bin was probably one of the craziest things of my life.
It's such a small thing, but everyone in it is like
weirdly dedicated,
so like meeting up with like solely people that I've met through
the SGaP chat was ridiculous to me because it's like
it's such a unique interest.
‘Cause it's not like “Oh, we like pony music.”
Like there's thousands of people like that.
But it's just like, “We like this guy and his music.”
“I've heard like literally all of it”
And all of us have heard literally all of his music.
It's just like ridiculous.
DMC: It's not really great to say this
but I kind of enjoy being
one of the only people I know
that knows some artists, or some music.
And that kind of makes it special to me.
They're unknown, and they're
very-very-very-very-very-very
unappreciated, and underappreciated.
SoGreatandPowerful wrote often the importance
of community and friendship.
Probably the most compelling thing about SGaP's story
is how much he valued community, and how he, at the same time,
distanced himself from it.
SGaP's legacy lives on through his small, but dedicated fan following.
The irony in taking a name of a fraud is that perhaps SGaP convinced himself
that he was one.
However, SGaP's fanbase is living proof that he was indeed able
to create art that was so great and powerful.
So, it's been almost two years
since I interviewed those fans of SoGreatandPowerful.
Since I started trying to put together a story
about one of the most interesting musicians I've ever come across.
And so much has changed in the
last two years that I --
I just want to talk a bit about what I've learned
throughout that process.
So, at the beginning, I thought that I would be
putting together a coherent story with a beginning, middle, and end.
But what I've
found out is that
In real life, coherent stories don't exist.
And in real life, beginnings, middles, and ends just don't happen.
So, through the process, we've had to
We've had to simplify things a lot. We've had to exaggerate some things and
leave some things out.
And I really didn't like having to do that.
So I just want you to keep that in mind,
since you've seen the documentary.
And I just want to ask you not to take --
Not to take it too seriously.
You know it's it's really just -- it's a story.
It's a story. It's a --
It's a badly written love letter to somebody who doesn't even like attention.
So, yeah. I guess we'll see where the story goes.
Thank you again to boby, DMC, Ron, and Emberlyn.
Thank you to Pacific Dusk for providing some animation,
and for reviewing an early draft of this documentary.
And thank you especially to Ādia,
for providing the animation, and the narration, and writing the script,
and just providing so much emotional support and motivation
to really like finish this documentary.
Finally.
So, yeah.
And thank you for watching!
Wash your hands. Stay safe, stay healthy.
Bye <3