Fiction (Dreams in Digital)
by Orgy

Album: Vapor Transmission (2000)
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Songfacts®:

  • The virtual world was encroaching on reality in 2000 when Orgy released "Fiction (Dreams in Digital)," a song that looks at what can happen when pixels on a screen become a priority. Lead singer Jay Gordon wrote the lyric after learning about a strange phenomenon in Tokyo.

    "I had heard that kids were committing suicide over these cartoon characters and stuff like that," he said in a Songfacts interview. "They were very upset if a show got canceled or something like that. I was fascinated by that whole phenomenon. They really idolize their icons."
  • This was the lead single from Orgy's second album, Vapor Transmission. They made a big impact two years earlier with their guitar-laced cover of "Blue Monday." Their industrial sound fell somewhere between nu-metal and goth, which was too confusing for most radio program directors, but they sold over a million copies of their debut album in America and were unquestionably cool. Two members - Jay Gordon and Ryan Shuck - got modelling gigs with Calvin Klein. They wore makeup and rocked it, taking the glam of hair metal into the new millennium.

    "Fiction" and the Vapor Transmission album didn't do as well as hoped, but sure kicked off with a big bang. Orgy threw a sybaritic bash at the El Capitan Entertainment Centre in Los Angeles that they called the Orgy Ball. The band performed to celebs like Tommy Lee, Courtney Love, Rod Stewart, and members of Cypress Hill, Korn, Backstreet Boys and Limp Bizkit.
  • Orgy's producer, Josh Abraham, was a key contributor to their songs and came up with most of the music for this song. He's credited as a writer along with the five band members.
  • The music video was directed by Nic Mathieu, who went on to make the 2016 movie Spectral. It's set in a futuristic world with a woman plugged into a mainframe, Matrix style.

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