one piece — music for the strawhats
last modified 3 months, 2 weeks ago
Happy two-year anniversary of me starting One Piece! Here's a little thing.
This post contains spoilers for One Piece up until the beginning of the Wano arc. (Kami, I'm looking at you...) It also spoils the identities of every single one of Luffy's crew members, as well as their backstories (including reveals from later in the story). And it also spoils the stories of other characters. So watch out.
Listicle time. I decided to challenge myself to find one song, among my library, that I would show each member of the Straw Hat Pirates. Each song has to be both something I genuinely think they would enjoy listening to, and something whose lyrics would speak to their story.
Here are the five rules I set for myself for this challenge.
- I'm only linking songs from albums that I listen to with some regularity.
- The song has to be something the character would enjoy listening to, according to my perception of what their taste in modern music might be.
- The lyrics (if any!) should relate, in some way, to the character's story or personality.
- The song should try to not be a big single, if there are any songs in the album that aren't big singles.
- One song per Straw Hat. No more and no less.
That is, I'm not going to add singles or songs from musicians I don't listen to with regularity. So I can't just say "yeah, Brook would fuck with Boney M.", even though he would, because I don't really listen to Boney M. beyond their big hits. Right? And obviously I can't recommend music I don't listen to. That's a no-brainer!
So this post involves a level of headcanon... But I don't think it's a big level. Like, I don't think "Usopp might like synth-pop" is a completely out-of-nowhere opinion to hold, for example. Right? Like, that's a pretty cold take. This also means I have to explore a bunch of different genres and sounds, because I think the Straw Hats would have a pretty varied taste in music. Not completely disparate, but for sure varied...
This is a bit of an optional challenge, and the relation can be distant, but it helps me pick something more specific out.
Speaking of specific:
There are some musical artists for which this is pretty difficult, so this is another optional rule. I'm trying to pick songs from albums, not like, from best-of compilations, okay?
And, finally:
And without further ado... let's begin!
Monkey D. Luffy - Don't Fence Me In, Amyl and the Sniffers 🎵
I'm born to be big, so don't fence me in
I wanna be part of everyone and everything
I'm not in your scene, that shit's limiting
I like elements of everyone and everything
I think Luffy would fuck with noisy punk music and off-kilter vocals. The latter is even canon...
This song is about, uh, exactly what it sounds like. It's asking for freedom and to not have assumptions made about the singer, which I think is a sentiment Luffy could sympathize with! He's a little too confident in himself to share it, exactly (in my opinion) but I think he could get behind the idea.
I also think that Luffy would refuse to listen to music with headphones on, he'd be a "speaker or nothing" type of guy. Sorry to anyone sharing a subway train with him. I decided to make this worse by making him play Amyl and the Sniffers because I occasionally sub in as an agent of chaos!
Roronoa Zoro - Mirror Mirror, Chokecherry 🎵
Every time I wake up and climb that mountain
Don't know my demon, but she is here with me
She is here with me
Every time I cut loose, I cut my head too
Don't know my demon, but she is here with me
She is here with me
Zoro is actually the character I waffled on the most, because I don't think I listen to very much music that he would listen to, much less music with lyrics I think he'd listen to. There were a lot of candidates that felt dishonest for me to place, as well, because they're not from artists or genres I listen to regularly...
So I ended up landing on grunge-land for him. (Despite not being huge into grunge—yet1). This song has an angrier energy while still being grungy, that is, a little bit mellower than my pick for Luffy — better suited for listening to with headphones at the gym, which is how I inevitably imagine Zoro listening to music modern-style whenever I do so.
It's also about being haunted by a girl you see in the mirror every day, who encourages you to cut loose and be angry with the world. I don't know if I need to explain further. Kuina's ghost is really kicking Zoro's ass today, huh?
‘Cat Burglar’ Nami - Dreamcatching, Magdalena Bay 🎵
Picture Yoshino
With pink petals floating in the air
I wanna go there
Train window facing east
And you're always next to me
And I'm next to you, I'm next to you
Meet me in the Swiss countryside
I saw a picture of it today and I wanna go before I die
Big oceans blue, I wanna see all the views
'Cause there's so much to do
And I'm next to you, I'm next to you
I have more poppy picks I could've taken for Nami, but I'm justifying the trippy altpop pick because MagBay have recently boomed on TikTok and I wholeheartedly believe that if Nami was Gen Z she'd be an influencer. Also, again, I think Usopp being a synthpop guy is entirely reasonable, and I #believe in him and Nami being actual legitimate friends, so I could see Usopp influencing Nami's taste in music...
I almost put "Dawning of the Season" for this entry ("Nah, you don't bother me / I'm like electricity", "Will we change? Will I be? / Adolescent thieves", etc) but ultimately I couldn't resist the siren song of Dreamcatching being literally about traveling the world with someone you love. Yeah. That's Nami...
‘God’ Usopp — Breathe Deeper, Tame Impala 🎵
If you think I couldn't hold my own, believe me, I can
(Believe me, I can, believe me, I can)
If it ain't so awful and we're all together, I can
(Believe me, I can, believe me, I can)
Subtly foreshadowed pick by my repeated mentions of Usopp and psychedelic synthpop. Very subtly. Very.
Uh, and this song is just... quote a Genius comment I just saw, "positive affirmations" and getting through scary and stressful stuff by taking a deep breath and believing in your own ability to make it through. Do I... do I have to spell out why I'd like for Usopp to listen to this song? I don't think I have to, right?
‘Black Leg’ Sanji - Enchantment, Corinne Bailey Rae 🎵
I can't escape, or so it seems
I'd run away, he's in my dreams
He possesses an enchantment
Tell me I'm forgiven
He calls, don't know how I fell under his spell
Lately I've been driven
He smiles, an enchantment
It's the kind of sleepwalk that never ends
A type of loan with no dividends
It's a parlor game where you're given chase
Guess it could be called an acquired taste
I know, he knows; he calls, I go...
Sanji was hard in a different way from other Straw Hats. Everyone else, I had to dig a bit through my library to pick their song out...
Sanji, though? Look. I'm a hopeless romantic with loser tendencies who listens to a lot of music you can poorly croon along to while doing tasks, which is exactly how I imagine Sanji listening to music. What was hard was narrowing down what to pick for him!!
I ended up leaning on my third rule: the lyrics should relate to the character's story. This knocked off most of my candidates, actually, because... see... I think Sanji would listen to a lot of music about falling in love. And this is something he's yet to do seriously, in canon... So either the song shouldn't be about romance at all, or its lyrics about romantic love should be applicable to some other experience I do think Sanji has lived through.
So I picked "Enchantment" because it reminded me of one of my favourite parts of Whole Cake Island, which is the fact that it's yet another arc where a crewmate goes "I'm putting in my two weeks' notice as a Straw Hat for the crew's own good!" and Luffy goes "SIKE BITCH YOU THOUGHT, THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS RESIGNATIONS FROM MY FOUND FAMILY!"
Seriously. "He knows, I know / He calls, I go"? I saw that happen on panel. At least twice. In different arcs!! ..."Guess it could be called an acquired taste" is mostly here as a food joke, though...
Tony Tony Chopper — Wild West, Gregory and the Hawk 🎵
Amazing, you're amazed
At the cold you see the fire by your face
Bitter bloom, flightless skies
To fear the doom, it's no surprise
Now realize, there's no sense in losin' your mind
Before your time
Chopper was so hard to pin a song down for. At one point I thought about giving him an ABBA song (and yes, I do listen to ABBA with regularity, thank you) but none felt quite right... Then I thought, hey, he's a soft little guy from a winter island: I bet he'd appreciate some singer-songwriter!
(Moenie & Kitchi is a very cold-weather album for me... A very particular type of cold weather —it has to be windy [non-negotiable] and near the ocean, and it ideally has some unsnowed grassland to it— and this weather isn't exactly what I associate with cutesy reindeer Chopper, but, whatever! I think it counts! Chopper could be irish if he wanted to. :/)
Anyway, the lyrics of this song remind me a lot of Chopper's backstory and generally of the Drum Island arc. It's a song about a young person with a big dream that may or may not be actually possible, sung by an older person who wants to believe in this dream, would love to see it come true, but can't quite follow through. A little bit of that classic "trusting the next generation", which is a thing in the entirety of One Piece and huh why did I never put the parallel together...? well, anyway. I think now that I've explained it, it makes sense.
This song is a little bit of a stretch in the "they'd listen to it" column, but I think Chopper should be allowed to carry a profound sadness and longing somewhere inside him, even now that he has friends and he's gotten over the whole "monster" thing (more or less). I think he deserves a little wistfulness. Let my boy sigh bigly and smile while staring out of the window. It'd do wonders for his characterization, Oda!!
Nico Robin — 40', Franz Ferdinand 🎵
Salt scales upon my drying arms
Burn my back beneath the sun
But I am cold beneath the burning rays
Looking down, looking down, down, down again
Oh, la la la la, la la la la, la la la la, la la la la...
(Oh...) And forty feet remain
According to the revered institution that is Genius Lyrics, 40' is a song about standing at the edge of a precipice and contemplating jumping, and then not jumping. I shouldn't say why this is Robin as fuck, you've read the damn story... Like, she literally stands at the edge of a huge precipice overlooking the water and decides there whether she wants to live or not. That's one of the best moments in the entire show. Come on. You've seen it, you've quoted it, you've loved it!
Also, I think she'd enjoy the morbid streak present throughout Franz Ferdinand's self titled 2004 album! I have no basis for this, I just think it. ...And I also think it's really funny to give her an extremely millennial band to enjoy, considering the younger cohort of the Strawhat crew has immense Gen Z energy (to me). Like, yeah. That sounds about right for Robin. she's a Chelsea Dagger kinda woman. Lol
I originally planned on giving Sanji a Franz Ferdinand song and ended up not doing that because it fit Robin better and I love her more than Sanji. Sanji also loves Robin more than Sanji, though, so I think he'll forgive me.
‘Cyborg’ Franky — Superheroes, Daft Punk 🎵
I don't think I need to explain why I gravitated towards two french house DJs who wear robot heads as disguises in public when the time came to choose a song for the robot shipwright of the crew. Right? Right? Like that's self evident. I think.
Sorry for giving him a song with no lyrics other than "something's in the air, something's in the air". If it helps: I think you could sync up Franky's dance to this song. You know the one he does. You know the one.
‘Soul King’ Brook — Open Water, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard 🎵
Open water, where's the shore gone?
How'd I falter? Open water
Height of the sea will bury me
And all I see is open water
First of all I want to show Brook King Gizzard because he's a musician and friends of mine who know music have reassured me that King Gizzard are really good at doing technically impressive music, so I wanna know Brook's take on that.
Second of all, this is literally a song about dying in the middle of the sea.
...'Nuff said!
‘Knight of the Sea’ Jinbe — Moonlight, Everything Everything 🎵
On the wind, I hear,
"Please be good to me"
Chaos, slow and warm
All I need is red blood
The same blood that I feel now
"Lyrically it’s about feeling a bit stuck in life and not making any progress. But, again, there’s lots of hope in there (...) There’s something about never moving on from the village in the ’90s, which isn’t my story at all. It’s a bit like a prayer, that song." —Jonathan Higgs, lead singer & songwriter of the band (according to Genius Lyrics, at least...)
Jinbe's not a character who's stuck in the past, to me, so much as he is a character who has an immense amount of past & has shouldered the burden of others' unresolved pasts for the last, like, actual decade of his life, plus? "never moving on from [something] which isn't my story", and all...
"It's a bit like a prayer", "but there's lots of hope in there" are also descriptions that resonate a lot with me for Jinbe... I don't know if I can explain coherently why without gesturing at the Poneglyph in the room. Well, I think there's a lot of hope in Jinbe. This particular kind of hope that good people have, that a better world really is possible; I can only call it faith. This sort of thing.
And there's also some lyrics about being near a tragedy or someone doing an awful thing, "twenty more seconds and it could've been me". Certified "bowing in front of Nami" moment (maybe my favourite part of the entirety of Fishman Island, its only competition being the Fisher Tiger flashback). And speaking of which: the "living in a holocene way" line, living in an age of human rule...
I really just, think a lot about how much Jinbe puts on his own shoulders that's like, maybe technically other people's fault and other people's problems for themselves to deal with, but Jinbe cares and thinks it's his duty, so he stands with them. He's my solidarity king, idk what to tell you. Get this dude in your political organizating.
Also, "All I need is red blood / The same blood that I feel now". Do I have to say it?
— BONUS ROUND —
Nefertari Vivi — Wild, aeseaes 🎵
I’ll purr like a good child
But you know I’m still wild, still wild
Every time I leave my day body
I turn into Bastet, feeling godly
Spending all my lives like cigarettes like I’m 17
Idle as a spider full of flies
Clawing at thе oceans in your eyes
I don’t need somе fabricated grind to feel all right
A nice mellow thing about a creature who's currently content in domestic stillness, but cheekily points out how she's "still wild", still untamed. I also think the imagery of the song lends itself really well to Vivi's deal —"I turn into Bastet" and "Clawing at the oceans", most obviously, but also "like I'm 17", when she was 16 while sailing with the Strawhats. I think this could be a fun "mid-timeskip-longing-missing-her-friends" type of song? I dunno.
And I also think Vivi would appreciate a song like this one. It's pleasant and silky without losing too much vibrancy. I think that lands squarely within her music taste... I'm not sure how to further justify this, actually. I hope the choice makes sense!
I wanted to do other would-be Strawhats, (especially a certain fan-favourite would-be Strawhat introduced during the third act of the Wano arc), but not only am I running out of time to write this post—I also don't necessarily have great song ideas for these characters?
And if I'm not picking up those characters, I feel even less prepared to assign songs to popular characters from other crews or organizations who are nonetheless closely tied to the Strawhats2. At some point I have to call it, and Vivi is where I'm calling it. That said, if there's demand, I can rack up some more thoughts for a part 2 to this post...
Listicles are fun and easy to churn out, it turns out. (Or, uh, lower effort, at least...) That's why Buzzfeed did so many of them back in the day! This is a new revelation for me, lol
And this post is also, in a way, an eulogy for my current music taste... my New Years' Resolution involves listening to a lot of new music, so I'm sure that in just a year, I'll feel completely different about this post. I used to mostly discover music through Spotify's algorhythm, or through randomly finding them on YouTube, or through hearing about them on shortform videocontent platform of your choice — I found Chokecherry through The Bun 91.3.
But this year I want to finally explore music through your usual, analog means; that is, being told this and that band is good by people I know or through the recommendations of individual strangers. I think it'll do a lot of good for my knowledge of music, and enrich my enjoyment of it... Broaden my tastes! And so, I'm publishing this listicle as a last monument to my recently listened stuff before I make the plunge. We'll see how that works out for me...
Anyway, that's about it for this post! And, as always...
thank you for reading!