Sine from above: God is sound

What happens when a singer is able to combine mystical references about God and the Universe with scientific principles of sound and vibration?

Lady Gaga has released her 6th studio album, Chromatica, which is an incredible journey through her mind, her emotional struggles and subsequent catharsis while making the album.

Perhaps, the song that represents the most this process of healing through music is the track “Sine from above” which features Elton John, and explores the themes of God and sound through some scientific and mystic references and interesting plays of words.

So, let’s take a look on how the song accomplishes to express these topics in a very striking way.

The lightning

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When I was young, I prayed for lightning

My mother said it would come and find me

I found myself without a prayer

I lost my love and no one cared

When I was young, I prayed for lightning

In the first verse, Gaga talks about praying for lightning. Lightning symbolizes some kind of spiritual manifestation. For its bright nature it can be also seen as a metaphor for enlightenment, clarity of mind and the undoing of ignorance.

The subsequent lyrics show her solitude, because no one answered her prayers or cared about the love she has lost. But she keeps praying anyway, as indicated by the repetition of the first phrase at the end of the verse.

The wave

Yeah, I looked with my face up to the sky

But I saw nothing there, no, no, nothing there

Yeah, I stared while my eyes filled up with tears

But there was nothing there, no, no, nothing

Here Gaga is still waiting for something to happen, and even though she cries nothing happens. It’s also worth noting that lightning can only come after a thunderstorm. In another song of the album, “Rain on me”, the singer uses rain as a metaphor for crying. This interpretation can be also applied here, as we can evidence with the next verse.

I heard one sine from above (Oh)

I heard one sine from above (Oh)

Here we can imply that after crying, she finally got the indication she was looking for. The lightning came after the thunderstorm. But why is it spelled “sine” as opposed to “sign”?

Lady Gaga clarifies that in an interview for Apple Music:

"S-I-N-E, because it's a sound wave," she explained to Apple Music. "That sound, sine, from above is what healed me to be able to dance my way out of this album. That was later in the recording process that I actually was like, 'And now let me pay tribute to the very thing that has revived me, and that is music.'"

The Universe of sound

Then the signal split in two

The sound created stars like me and you

Before there was love, there was silence

I heard one sine

And it healed my heart, heard a sine

In the Chorus, we get to the core concept of the song, which is that the creation of the Universe is the result of a sound wave. In the same interview mentioned above, Gaga talks about her belief in God and the idea that resulted in the meaning of the song.

“(...) There’s this theory that the whole world was created by a feminine soundwave. And that feminine soundwave actually saw(...) what they thought was their father below them and fell to be with their father, but it was actually a reflection from behind them. So, they fell into an abyss and broke into two (...) then there were two galaxies that were born, and one was good and one was evil. (...) the evil one is the one where evil things pretended to be God and them we believed in them and we divided, and then we started to argue and hate each other.

But my understanding of God is that it’s a sine. I believe God is, God began as a sound.”

“Then the signal split in two” is a reference to the theory she explains, in which the sound wave becomes two. “The sound created stars like me and you” reinforces the explanation of God as this sound wave which created all of us.

The lyric “before there was love, there was silence”, corroborates this idea, since God is the symbol of love in spiritual teachings. Which means that before there was love (God), there was silence, because God is sound.

Melancholic euphoria

When I was young, I felt immortal

And not a day went by without a struggle

I lived my days just for the nights

I lost myself under the lights

When I was young, I felt immortal

In the second part of the song we have a more ambiguous feeling. Through references of feeling immortal and seeing lights we get a positive, euphoric feeling, while the mention of struggles denotes the permanence of difficult feelings and the search for something more.

Living your days for the night can mean living while not appreciating the moment, and instead looking for the future. While being lost under the lights can mean that the glimpses of enlightenment, they got made them feel more lost because they didn’t have the full picture yet.

Then we proceed to the pre-chorus and chorus again. And even though Gaga explained the concept of the song through the theory she talks about on the interview, we still have another lens through which we can look these lyrics, a more scientific one.

Vibrating strings

There’s a scientific theory, called string theory, which proposes that every particle that makes up the whole Universe vibrates, and this vibration is how they interact with each other and form the reality we live in. Michio Kaku, co – founder of this theory, associates his scientific findings with music and defines some of the things we know within this frame of mind.

According to him:

“The subatomic particles we see in nature, the quarks, the electrons are nothing but musical notes on a tiny vibrating string.”

“The universe is symphony of vibrating strings”

He also talks about a concept called the “mind of God” which was a subject to Albert Einstein’s’ studies. About it, he says:

(...) it is cosmic music resonating through 11-dimensional hyperspace”

We are not a physics blog, so let’s keep it simple, and say that this explanation shows a way to understand that the Universe is this cosmic music, cosmic vibration resonating through space, time, and whatever other dimensions may exist. A sophisticated way to imply that Gaga’s vision about God has some substance to it. That God can indeed be sound.

Then we get to the final part of the song, in which we hear the following lyrics distorted and muffled, below some crazy drums and dance sounds.

Healed my heart

Healed my

Heart, heard a sine

Healed my

Heart, heard a sine

This last instrumental part is the expression of everything we talked here. It’s as if, after Gaga pleading and being able to connect to music, the Universe responds through its cosmic music and heals her. The drums are an experimental sound which surprises us because they come out of nowhere and are so different that our minds can’t comprehend it really well.

But that’s exactly the point. After all, if we were able to hear the Universe, wouldn’t it probably sound somewhat like that?