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About

Genius Annotation

“Hide and Seek” is a song by Imogen Heap, released as the first single from her second album, Speak for Yourself.

On this track, Imogen is solely accompanied by a keyboard synthesiser transformed by a vocoder, which creates an altered a cappella sound.

Q&A

Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning

What has the media said about the song?
Genius Answer

In 2018, NPR ranked this as the #147 greatest song by a female or nonbinary artist in the 21st century, saying:

Few songs give you goosebumps with every listen. With nothing but her voice and a vocoder, Imogen Heap has created something emotive, dynamic and minimalistic with ‘Hide and Seek.’ A pioneer of electronic pop, Heap manages to bend, twist, flip, grow and shrink notes with her vocal dexterity here, and the result is the stand-out gem of her illustrious career.

What has Imogen Heap said about the song being used in the TV show The OC?
Genius Answer

Well, interestingly, I didn’t know it was going to be in the series, because the BBC get blanket licensing to put whatever they want in anything that’s BBC produced – so they didn’t have to ask permission, which is great for the BBC, because that’s one of the banes of a music supervisor’s life. So it was a total surprise. ‘I kept seeing this thing called Normal People, and I was like “What’s that?”, because I don’t have time to watch telly. Then it went on to Hulu, so whenever it gets on a new service, you see another flurry of tweets and messages. It’s been amazing. It has this feeling that it makes me want to go back into the studio, and then also the deep frustration of not being able to get into the studio. I’m just so happy for it. It’s had this unimaginable, crazy life, that song. It’s like an enigma all of its own, it just caught a nerve many times. It comes back to The OC, but it’s not just because of The OC, it’s something about the song, obviously. There’s something about that mixture, and about that time, it being in the memes and being intertwined in people’s lives. And I just feel really lucky, because obviously, it’ll give me a few extra pennies in this dry spell.

–via Metro.co.uk (2020)

Credits
Produced By
Written By
Programmer
Mixing Engineer
Mastering Engineer
Engineer
Arranger
Recorded At
The Hideaway
Release Date
May 19, 2005
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