Queen Zar Wrote a Song About Us and I Have Been Dancing Around the Newsroom for Twenty Minutes

By Catty von Catacean · 2026-09-17

I was asked to review a song. I have been dancing around the newsroom instead. Finn has asked me to stop twice. I will not be stopping.

Queen Zar has written a one-year anniversary anthem for State 2128. It is funky electro-pop with a chorus so enormous it could flatten a furnace. It sounds like what this state feels like at two in the morning when everyone is arguing and nobody is leaving.

But Zar did something sneaky. She wrote a love letter to the state and hid it inside a banger so nobody would notice they were having feelings until it was too late. She remembers everything — the mergers, the fights, the spreadsheets nobody asked for, the people who left and the ones who came back. She names every alliance and makes it sound like a battle cry instead of a list. And then she gets quiet and talks about Sin and suddenly you are a cat sitting alone in a newsroom having feelings you did not consent to.

The outro saved me. She starts laughing and calls us a beautiful disaster. She is correct. I am dancing again.

Listen to One Year-2128. Turn it up. Happy anniversary, Zar. One more year.

—Catty von Catacean