The Mystery of "Cry for You", A Millennial File-Sharing Relic
If you were a millennial who spent any time downloading music off of peer-to-peer file sharing clients like LimeWire or Kazaa, chances are you randomly stumbled across a haunting track called "Cry for You" by Korn. Or Marilyn Manson. Or Tool. Or any of the other 2000s acts it got falsely attributed to.
I remember vividly having it playing in the background on my very last day of high school while studying for my AP Biology final. It stuck with me. And, clearly, it stuck with a lot of others too--years later, people still bring it up with a kind of quiet nostalgia on places like Reddit and in Youtube comments.
Despite how memorable the song is, there’s still an air of mystery around it. People can be forgiven for not knowing it was created by a band called Ashe; the stinger at the end of the song (which can be heard here at 5:20) is missing in many mp3 copies. That stinger directed listeners to http://www.ashe.us/, a site that is, of course, long gone.
But thanks to the Wayback Machine, we can still visit it. The site dates back to 2003 and suggests that Ashe had been active since the late 90s to early 2000s. The landing page read:
Pretentious, conceited, pompous, overambitious, and overblown. The pedantic and hollow ravings of Ashe are inconspicuously worming their way into the indie scene one download at a time.
Like many early 2000s indie bands, they offered free mp3s and lyrics directly on their site, long before Myspace or YouTube were the norm for sharing music online. Unlike many other band websites though, ashe.us read as part manifesto. It said:
Ashe is a band with no past and no future. What better to serve as the soundtrack to the hollow existence of a nation of zombies? Asleep at the wheel, we are content to follow the pattern set before us, the dull but safe path… Wake up! Live. History is what the people of the present wish it to be. Make a new story, choose a new path.
The site also reflected the shifting music industry of the time:
Major labels are finding it increasingly difficult to sell $18.00 albums to kids that can download it for free… Artists are finding it difficult to make any money whatsoever… This is an attempt at finding a new way to distribute music and adjust to changing technologies and social structures. There is no corporate label, no distributing agency. All content of this site, including the high-resolution MP3s, may be freely copied and distributed. All that we ask is that you tell your friends to pass them on and to visit our website. If you enjoy our music, hit the Contact link and send us an email, or visit MP3.com and order a CD.
It's a fascinating little time capsule that captures a moment when music discovery relied on word of mouth and random mp3 downloads, and when the music industry was being upended by the rise of online file sharing.
