An Activist’s Anthem: Death of an Optimist
By: Chau-Anh Nguyen
As someone who was ranked in the top 0.05% of listeners of Grandson’s music on their Spotify wrapped 2020, let me start off by saying that this article is obviously going to be biased. However, I’d still like to say that Grandson’s (also known as Jordan Edward Benjamin) new album, Death of an Optimist (abbreviated DOAO), is so well-crafted that it would be loved from the objective angle as well. Released on December 4, 2020, the alternative artist’s debut album consists of 12 tracks that total up to 38 minutes worth of music. Anticipation was high among Grandson’s fans (dubbed “Grandkids”) for the past six months when the artist began dropping cryptic clues, such as mysterious barcodes, sudden poetry, and even a leaked number. These random posts with seemingly no context at all confused and left fans on their toes, and many had to become creative when piecing the puzzles together. For example, because the barcode in the picture above did not scan, the grandkids deducted that there must be a hidden meaning in the numbers listed. Some of the most common guesses include, “DOA001, [meaning] Death Of America Part 1? . . . ,” “June 1st, 2021,” or some variation of both song/ album titles and release dates. In fact, one fan who called the number commented about his odd experience: “Welp, I called the number [. . .] So, it was talking about FBF Distribution Services, [and] then it gave an area code.” Eventually, the phone number was revealed to be an automated text message system where Grandson shares “some updates, snippets of new music, . . .” and hints regarding the upcoming album concept.
The phone number only allowed these sentiments to spur and grow, with many speculating if he even meant to leak the number at all.
This article would be too lengthy if we were to cover all of the in-depth details but to simply summarize, over the course of the six months, Grandson’s trail of mysterious photos, random codes, odd voicemails, and cryptic website updates caused such upheavals of intrigue that the entire Grandkids community even formed full-on forums (one of the most popular being an entire DOAO discord) to collaborate with other fans and piece the clues together. 15
