Shatner – Heterosapien (2018)
On May 12th of this year, Shatner released their newest album entitled Enlightenmental. Along with the album, they also released the single and music video for ‘Heterosapien’.
‘Heterosapein’ is an upbeat indie-pop song that sounds like a cross between The B-52’s and The Clash. While the style isn’t exactly the same, its similar in that the use of guitars throughout the song has a similar vibe and sound. Shatner’s song ‘Heterosapians’ makes me think of the band R.E.M, specifically ‘Losing My Religion’ and ‘Man on the Moon’; the way the guitars are used in the intro of each song sound similar, as well as the overall song.
To me the lyrics, ‘I stood on the moon looked back on a sphere and I said to myself how did I get here’ is about being out of touch with yourself. You get inside of your own head and feel so caught up in your own personal thoughts that it may seem as though your mind is drifting through space. You’re so focused on how you want the world to see you and the image you are projecting, that you don’t realise that you are more aware of what’s going on online than in reality and the world around you.
In the song, Shatner sings ‘I gave you fire/ The more I learned/ The more it went to my head I got my fingers burned. I’m a heterosapien man ever since I lost myself, now losing touch with reality’. This makes me think that the artist is saying they were so self-involved when it came to their image and finding ways to boost their ego, that they were suddenly hit with the realisation of being selfish and caring how people perceived them.
The definition of heterosapien is when humans merge with computers or continue evolving. This most likely means that with the advancement in technology, we get sucked into maintaining our online identity and try to be somebody that we’re not in real life. We care too much about what people think of us. It’s like living a double life; we act one way online and another way in reality.
Shatner is a band from Leeds, England. In addition to Enlightenmental, they released a single titled ‘Anticlockwise’ with two full-length albums called Thirteen O’Clock and Wow Signals.
