What Is The Song In The Matrix: Resurrections Trailer?
That thrumming beat. Those spooky vocals. The psychedelic sound as it all comes together. There's something about the song in the "The Matrix: Resurrections" trailer that's eerily familiar. And let's be honest, the truth is you've probably heard it before if you've ever tuned in to a classic rock station or, perhaps, attended a 1960s-themed party.
It certainly sets a tone for the film, following Neo's (Keanu Reeves) question to his therapist (Neal Patrick Harris). "Am I crazy?" Neo asks in the trailer. And though the answer is, "We don't use that word in here," the scenes that follow show us exactly what's led him to wonder about the state of his sanity. We watch, entranced, as Neo swallows pills, steps through a mirror, morphs into an older man, and encounters various objects and images related to rabbits. All the while, that song in the background builds the mood — and references rabbits, too.
As trailers are meant to do, this one leaves us curious. We'll have to wait until the movie's release on December 22 to get all the answers we crave. But in the meantime, finding out more about the song—and those rabbit references — is fair game for fans to dig into.
Name that song
The song in question is "White Rabbit," written by Grace Slick, who brought it with her when she joined Jefferson Airplane as the band's singer in 1966. Recorded for the album "Surrealistic Pillow," it peaked at No. 8 on Billboard's Top 100 chart in 1967 and has remained popular ever since.
According to Slick, composing the song wasn't exactly a polished operation. "I wrote 'White Rabbit' on a red upright piano that cost me about $50. It had eight or 10 keys missing, but that was OK because I could hear in my head the notes that weren't there," she told The Guardian.
The result proves she was right. The song earned a spot on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list in 2004. In 2012, it made Rate Your Music's Top Singles of All-Time chart. In fact, Slick claims she's still paying her bills from the royalties of this one song decades after its release. But she didn't write it to make a buck. She was inspired by the life she was living, the people she was meeting, and the experiences she was having that tied her to the hippie culture of the 1960s.
A long, strange trip
Listen closely to the lyrics, and it's easy to understand why the imagery presented in "White Rabbit" resonates with a modern film like "The Matrix: Resurrections." The world Grace Slick describes in the song is strongly associated with the experiences of Alice, the protagonist in Lewis Carroll's novel, "Alice in Wonderland," who falls through a rabbit hole and works through all sorts of outlandish situations (including run-ins with a character called the "White Rabbit") to find her way back to the life she knows. Slick also references drugs in the song as a way to present the idea of alternative realities.
"Alice was on her own, and she was in a very strange place, but she kept on going and she followed her curiosity — that's the 'White Rabbit,'" Slick told The Guardian. "The song is a little dark. It's not saying everything's going to be wonderful ... Lewis Carroll was looking at how things are run and the people who rule us."
Sound familiar? If there's one thing we can be sure about as we anticipate the release of the "The Matrix: Resurrections," it's this: Neo is destined to have a difficult journey. And his struggle is the reason we can't wait to see this film.