What movies is Where Is My Mind in?

This Malignant article contains spoilers.

Like Gabriel (Ray Chase) inside Madison’s head (Annabelle Wallis), once you hear Safari Riot and Grayson Sanders’ energetic cover of Pixies song “Where Is My Mind,” it’ll be very difficult to get that earworm out of your brain. It’s a tune that accompanies some of Malignant‘s most outrageous scenes, like a missing woman suddenly falling through Madison’s ceiling in the second act. And director James Wan chose wisely. After all, “Where Is My Mind” is a song that has a history of ushering in shocking moments in Hollywood movies.

If Stephen King fans jumped at the movie’s big Gabriel twist and its obvious The Dark Half inspiration, fans of the movie Fight Club likely got a kick from hearing the song that years ago closed out David Fincher’s classic film, which, fittingly enough, is also about split personalities. But in 1999, it was the Pixies’ original that accompanied the famous final scene of Fight Club, as the Narrator (Edward Norton) and Marla (Helena Bonham Carter) hold hands while watching bombs erase the city’s skyline (and hopefully, all that pesky credit card debt). Arguably used more effectively in the Fincher film, “Where Is My Mind” will always be tied to that defining moment in cinema.

Safari Riot and Sanders’ version of “Where Is My Mind” actually seems a little out of place when it first blasts through a scene in the movie, an over-the-top accompaniment to what seems like your standard slasher flick, but it’s actually incredibly appropriate — not just for the massive tonal shift later on but the plot itself. Pixies’ frontman Black Francis originally sings of a mind “way out in the water,” a collapsing head with “nothing in it,” which could describe Madison’s fugue state as Gabriel takes over her body and begins his gruesome killing spree around Seattle, with Gabriel’s presence possibly symbolic of a mental disorder taken to the extreme.

• This disorientation anthem was written by Pixies lead singer Frank Black, who was inspired by a snorkeling adventure. Under water, sometimes the only way to know which way is up is by looking at the air bubbles. Black told Select (October 1997): "That came from me snorkeling in the Caribbean and having this very small fish trying to chase me. I don't know why - I don't know too much about fish behavior."

• In a Songfacts interview with Frank Black, he talked about "Where Is My Mind?" Said Black: "In terms of the content, you don't know where that's going to come. It's such a ricochet, 'pinball wizard' kind of thing - these things bouncing into each other: words, concepts, manic thinking. Half the songs I've written, I had no idea what I was talking about. Certainly, anything that appears into the abstract, I don't know."

• This was used in the last scene of the 1999 mind-bending movie Fight Club, which helped introduce the Pixies to a new audience. Many other TV series and movies have used the song, often when a character is questioning his or her grip on reality. Movies to use it include:

  Horns (2013)

  
  Sucker Punch (2011) - Emily Browning version
  Observe and Report (2009) - City Wolf version
  Mr. Nobody (2009)
  Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me (1992)
  A Matter of Degrees (1990)

  On the HBO series The Leftovers, the song is used as a motif when characters aren't sure what is real. Other TV series include:

  The Tick ("Where's My Mind" - 2017)

  
  Beyond ("The Hour of the Wolf" - 2017)
  The Good Wife ("Battle of the Proxies" - 2012)
  Mr. Robot ("eps1.8_m1rr0r1ng.qt" - 2015) - Maxence Cyrin version
  Cold Case ("True Calling" - 2008)
  How I Met Your Mother ("Cupcake" - 2006)
  Criminal Minds ("Sex, Birth, Death" - 2006)
  Veronica Mars ("Driver Ed" - 2005)

• Nada Surf covered this for the 1999 album Where Is My Mind? A Tribute To The Pixies; The Toadies covered it on their 2004 album Best Of Toadies: Live From Paradise. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Rachel - London, England

• Producer Steve Albini used some unusual recording techniques on Surfer Rosa as he was desperate to avoid "the studio sound." For instance he moved all the studio equipment to its bathroom in the hope of achieving a real rather than studio echo on bassist Kim Deal's backing vocals for this and her lead vocals on Gigantic. Albini later admitted that the record could have been completed in a week were if not for the time wasted experimenting on projects like this.

• Frank Black acknowledges he would never have completed the song without some words of encouragement from his then-girlfriend and future wife, Jean Walsh.

  "I was strumming the guitar in the bedroom, and she stuck her head out and said, 'Finish that song, that's a good one,'" he recalled to ABC Audio. "So I was, like, 'Oh, OK.' And she had never said anything like that to me before, and hasn't ever since."

• The Brooklyn-based independent publisher Akashic Books brought the song to life as a whimsical adventure story in a 24-page picture book. It tells the story of a young girl who loses her mind when she falls off a skateboard, then travels to magical lands in search of it.

Fight Club (1999)

As the movie comes to a chaotic, explosive end, "Where is My Mind?" lends a mood and message to the film that no other song could.

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