Differentology

Differentology started as a jam. By Bunji Garlin's account in a 2013 radio interview, the song came to him during an impromptu studio session with the guitarist Nigel Rojas, whose Spanish guitar runs through the finished track. Produced by Keron Thompson and released by Sheriff Music on 7 November 2012, it was one of Garlin's first offerings for the 2013 Carnival season, a soca call to be ready for the road, described by one writer as a Latin jazz-infused ode to Carnival. Carnival songs rarely get much critical attention, but this one drew interviews and articles across the Trinidadian press. It also produced a famous mishearing: a line about the crowd waking up was heard by many as the cow waking up, a phrase that spread among locals and spawned parody accounts online. Through the 2013 season Garlin often opened and closed his sets with it, introducing Rojas on stage. The video, released that May, put him in Viking gear among costumed masqueraders. Then it travelled. Major Lazer remixed it for their free EP Lazers Never Die Vol. 4, and a video for the remix was shot at their concert in Trinidad in September 2013. The song won the fan-voted Soul Train Award for Best International Performance, turned up on Grey's Anatomy, and in 2019 became the campaign song of Canada's New Democratic Party. For a genre made to live and die in a single Carnival season, it was proof that a soca record could keep going long after the costumes came off.