Have you every watched The Wizard of Oz, while listening to Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon? If you answered no, do it now. I'll wait here...
Okay, now that we're all caught up, we can collectively marvel at how incredible it is that two disparate works of art can somehow speak to each other in such a visceral and convincing way. Certain moments, like when the alarm clocks from "Time" go off just as Margaret Hamilton rides her bicycle on screen or when the cash register at the beginning of "Money" marks the exact moment Dorothy opens the door to Munchkinland, are so coordinated that it begins to seem plausible that Pink Floyd planned an entire album based on the film.
Alas, that's not actually true. The phenomenon is due to sheer coincidence and something called apophenia, which is described as "the experience of perceiving patterns or connections in random or meaningless data." We tend to focus on the moments that do sync up without giving equal attention to the parts that don't. But just because the connection wasn't intended doesn't mean that we can't still feel it.
When Taylor Swift released the music video for "Style" a few months ago, fans were confused. The moody tone didn't fit the upbeat vibe of the song. Many thought it would have been a better companion to Swift's "Wildest Dreams," a song that has drawn favorable comparisons to Lana del Rey's music. This got me thinking. Would the footage from the "Style" music video feel more at home to a Lana song?
The answer was a resounding YES. Like with Oz and Pink Floyd, there were multiple moments that felt so right, like when a dramatic "Oh" in both song and video sync up at precisely the same moment. I wanted to share my findings so I whipped up a video of the result and put it on Tumblr. Weeks passed and only a dozen or so users noticed. And then suddenly it caught on. Thousands of people started to reblog it, with comments like:
