Sad Machine

"Sad Machine" is a song recorded by the American electronic music producer Porter Robinson for his debut studio album, Worlds (2014).

It charted on Billboard's Dance/Electronic Songs and received a gold certification in the United States by the Recording Industry Association of America.

He wished for the listener to anticipate a drum and bass beat and become caught off guard when the song revealed its actual tempo.

[7] The track has "cheap little general-midi interludes" reminiscent of Nintendo 64 and old computer games, which are nostalgic to Robinson, helping "Sad Machine" to feel "fantastical and fictional" in his view.

[5] With a mid-tempo instrumental and "starry-eyed melodic structure", Fitzmaurice said that "Sad Machine" was one of some tracks on Worlds that resembled the "high-wire synth-pop fantasias" of Passion Pit,[7] with Consequence of Sound's Derek Staples comparing it to their album Manners (2009).

[10] Chris DeVille of Stereogum wrote that the song "splits the difference between M83's astral splendor and Passion Pit's hyperactive synth-pop".

[a] Duncan Cooper of The Fader said that "Sad Machine" "[s]ounds like how it would feel like to discover the sun",[13] while Lucas Villa of AXS said that the track goes to the "dreamier side of electronic music", describing it as "[h]eroic and awe-inspiring".

[4] The same year, Vice named it the seventh best EDM song of all time; Colin Joyce said that the track "shows part of what makes Robinson so great: he can anthropomorphize machines, lending feeling to heaps of metal and silicon".