I Hate Fairyland Playlist
Ive been reading “I Hate Fairyland“, Skottie Young’s absolutely unhinged masterpiece, and this playlist practically made itself.
And hey, making a playlist from a comic may be new for me, but I’ve made them for movies so, ya know.
Chaos that I feel very well-equipped to address.
It’s not necessarily pretty, but it’s definitely cathartic.
I Hate Fairyland, a recap
“I Hate Fairyland” is Skottie Young’s brilliantly twisted comic series about Gertrude (Gert), a six-year-old girl who gets sucked into a magical fairy tale world and told she needs to find a key to get home.
This sounds like standard fantasy stuff, right?
Except here’s the catch: she’s been stuck there for thirty years.
What started as a wide-eyed little girl on a whimsical adventure has become a cynical, violence-prone adult woman trapped in a child’s body, forced to maintain a veneer of cuteness while internally screaming at decades of enforced positivity and saccharine fairy tale logic.
Gert has become the antithesis of every plucky fairy tale protagonist.
She’s bitter, murderous, and absolutely done with the relentless cheer of Fairyland’s inhabitants who keep insisting everything is wonderful while she’s slowly losing her mind.
The comic is essentially what happens when someone gets permanently stuck in the tutorial level of a video game, except the tutorial is aggressively cheerful and the player has completely lost their patience with that shit.
It’s not overly complex, but it’s a fun premise and super well executed.
It has all the components and themes for a fun playlist. IMHO.
The Sweet Contradiction of Violence
Let’s start with the obvious track: “Sweet Motherfucker” by James Kochalka Superstar and Bit Shifter.
If that title doesn’t perfectly encapsulate the entire vibe of “I Hate Fairyland,” I don’t know what does! It’s sweet and profane smashed together like Gert’s personality, all sugar-coated rage and disappointed dreams. (Side note: James Kochalka is a comic creator himself, so there’s this meta-layer happening here that probably only comic nerds will fully appreciate, but hey!)
The playlist kicks off with “Jeepers Creepers” by Twink from the album “Supercute!” which is… just right. IMHO.
That exclamation point in the album title is doing some heavy lifting, giving us that false cheerfulness that runs throughout Young’s comic.
It’s the musical equivalent of Gert’s forced smile before she absolutely loses her shit and starts swinging that battle axe.
Then we dive headfirst into “Marshmallow Head” by POLYSICS, and this might be my favorite thematic choice in the entire playlist.
Marshmallows are soft, sweet, innocent.
Everything Fairyland pretends to be.
But really, marshmallows are also these weird, artificial, processed sugar bombs that’ll rot your teeth if you’re not careful. Kind of like how Fairyland appears sweet but is actually rotting Gert (and her teeth!) from the inside out.
The Backbone of Rage
Now let’s talk about the elephant in the room. Or, rather, the breakcore in the playlist? I’ve got Venetian Snares, BLÆRG, End, Dev/Null, and a whole army of artists who specialize in turning audio into weaponized chaos.
This isn’t accidental.
This is the sound of someone’s patience finally snapping after being pushed too far for too long.
Take “Cyberfreaks From Planet Pukoid” by Robot Ninja Dinosaur Bastards. That title alone sounds like something that would fit perfectly in the background of one of Gert’s more… explosive… moments.
And then there’s the track titled “cortisol_inside cortisol_explosion excessive_cortisol cortisol_everywhere” by Ada Rook, which… that’s just too real?
Cortisol is the stress hormone, and if that doesn’t describe Gert’s physiological state after 30 years of forced whimsy, I don’t know what does. (Ada Rook brings that industrial rock intensity that feels like machinery grinding against itself, which is basically what Gert’s psyche sounds like at this point.)
The Lullaby Subversion Strategy
Here’s where I really fuck around: I scattered a few lullaby cover tracks throughout this chaos. These are lullaby versions of Nine Inch Nails’ “Piggy,” Black Sabbath’s “Fairies Wear Boots,” and Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage”, etc
The concept of taking aggressive, adult music and turning it into something genuinely childish is… well, it’s basically the entire premise of “I Hate Fairyland” in reverse!
Young took all our childhood fairy tale expectations and twisted them into something dark and violent.
These lullaby covers take dark, violent music and twist it into something that sounds innocent.
It’s the same process, just flipped, and placing them strategically throughout the playlist creates these moments of calm that make the chaos hit even harder when it returns. (Plus, “Fairies Wear Boots” as a lullaby? ya know)
The Hyperpop Hysteria Connection
The inclusion of hyperpop tracks like “saturday” by Polygon Cove and qhostrevievv, or “Everybody Loves Me!” by Mowmowmow, helps convey what “I Hate Fairyland” is about emotionally.
Hyperpop is all about taking pop music’s most artificial, saccharine elements and pushing them until they become grotesque.
It’s cute-but-wrong, sweet-but-terrifying, happy-but-unhinged.
Sound familiar? That’s basically Gert’s entire character arc! She’s this adorable little girl who’s been pushed so far past her breaking point that her cuteness has become genuinely frightening.
The Playlist Flow
The way this playlist flows tells its own story. We start with relative innocence (“Jeepers Creepers”), quickly subvert it (“Sweet Motherfucker”), then dive deep into chaos before occasionally surfacing for these moments of false calm or nostalgic reflection. It’s like following Gert’s psychological journey in real-time.
And then we end with “Sabotage”, because ultimately, that’s what Gert represents. She’s the sabotage of the fairy tale narrative itself. She’s the reality principle crashing into the pleasure principle and leaving carnage in its wake.
Why Any Of This Matters (Beyond Just Being Fun)
Young’s comic isn’t really about fairy tales at all. It’s about what happens when we force people into narratives that don’t fit their actual needs or development.
My goal with this playlist was to capture that tension between expectation and reality, between the stories we’re told we should want and the stories we actually need to tell.
Every jarring transition from cute to violent, every moment where industrial noise crashes into lullaby sweetness, every time a hyperpop melody gets twisted into something unrecognizable: that’s the sound of someone refusing to play along with a script that was never written for their benefit.
And when we’re all dealing with our own versions of being trapped in systems that promise happiness but deliver exhaustion, maybe we need more playlists that sound like controlled demolition.
Maybe we need more music that says it’s okay to be angry about being force-fed positivity. Maybe we need more “artists” like Gert who are willing to grab a battle axe and start swinging at the pretty lies.
So yeah, this is my “I Hate Fairyland” playlist. It’s beautiful chaos, sweet violence, and the sound of someone finally saying “enough” to toxic happiness.
Support the artists on Bandcamp
Leave me a tip 🙏🙏
