A Blue Shell (a.k.a. "Spiny Shell") from the Super Mario Kart series.

I’ve been playing a lot of Mario Kart with my kid recently, and the Blue Shell is the bane of my existence (the only item in the game that is worse is the Lightning, which is too OP. It kills your momentum, shrinks you, and — crucially — takes away your items, leaving you defenseless. Often, a 1-2 punch from one opponent’s Lightning and another opponent’s Blue Shell almost seems coordinated). We recently discovered that Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has a “Vs. Mode” that lets you customize items, and I’ve found that disabling Lightning and Boos allows you to have a fighting chance in first place, if you also disable Coins (they seem to have a 1:1 probability, and if you are good at collecting them from the course then they become a detriment, since they take up an item box roulette roll and potentially leave you defenseless against the second-place AI’s nearly-inevitable Red Shell). I was playing around with some minor chords and suffered from some writer’s block for the lyrics, so I asked my wife for an idea and she suggested Blue Shells.

Let’s deal with some pedantry. Yes, I know that there are ways to deal with a Blue Shell — sometimes you can decelerate and let someone pass you to be targeted instead, and you can also get close to your competitors so the explosion will take them out too, and one time I hit a Lightning-ejected mushroom on the course at the second the shell was going to hit, and I somehow avoided it — so let’s just call that line poetic license. I also know that this song is not a 12-bar blues, but I gave it its title nonetheless.

This was a fun one to compose. It’s in G Dorian, with some non-Dorian touches coming from the V7 chord, and the borrowing of flat-II from G’s Phrygian mode. And then it felt like the ending needed a little something extra, so I decided to land it with a Picardy third.

This is a live performance, captured with my phone.

Lyrics

Look out now, look out now

The blue shell’s coming for you

Unless you have a super horn

There’s nothing you can do

Make peace with your god,

Bid first place adieu

Look out now, look out

The blue shell’s coming for you

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