Zeds Dead released “Channel Flipping” on November 8, 2024. In just over four minutes, the duo move between decades of film, television and music. The same channel-switching idea runs through their 2025 album Return to the Spectrum of Intergalactic Happiness.
When I first heard the song, I remember thinking it was a bit overwhelming. I didn’t quite understand the complexity of the masterpiece I was witnessing. Of course, it was Zeds Dead, and I was hooked. I couldn’t quite figure out why. On January 25, I heard “Channel Flipping” differently. It felt like a calling card for my generation.
As a mid-thirties millennial man myself, the song spoke to me in perfect wonderment. The multitude of embedded culture, cinema, television, and, of course, music overtook my poor, feeble mind. How can these two Canadian gentlemen be so tapped into my childhood memories? Living two very distant lives, this single moment perfectly encapsulates my young, scattered brain. The memories come pouring in as the song takes the listener on a complex lyrical journey through time, exploring the complexities of adulthood and the child-like nature of dreaming big.
The VHS memories in “Channel Flipping”
The Korgis’ 1980 hit “Everybody’s Got to Learn Sometime” serves as the foundation for the musical layers. Kicking off the track by sampling the famous quote from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, I could almost feel the worn-out sheath of the VHS case between my fingers as I shoved it in and out of the VCR as a small child.
Steering you through a journey of ’80s and ’90s memories, it felt like we grew up together. It’s the delicate things that really resonate with me in this song, like the soft humming of my mom’s favorite band, Queen, or the brief excerpts from the Beach Boys and the Everly Brothers that are almost too much.
As a suburbanite obsessed with music and the evolving nature of hip-hop, I raced home from school each day to catch Yo! MTV Raps or Headbangers Ball. It’s almost scary how much the song resonated with me. The distant memories of clunking through the channels on my wooden brown box TV, searching for Saturday morning cartoons, and driving to my grandmother’s house to listen to my mom’s old vinyl records on their record player.
The journey through the decades feels almost nauseating. Being born in the late ’80s, I fully understand their plight. I too was that snot-nosed kid in the ’90s, listening to music I wasn’t supposed to while trying to navigate middle school and then high school, all in an effort to find myself by the 2000s. Then one day, emerging as this so-called adult.
A Collage of Music, Film and Television
I totally lost it when the “Everybody dance now” sample came on. My brother Mark used to have the Jock Jams CD filled with nothing but popular ’90s dance hits. It’s wild how this Canadian duo can instantly transport me back to the days of boom boxes and CDs with just a three-second clip.
Then they hit me with “Today” by The Smashing Pumpkins and my grunge roots exploded. GET OUT OF MY BRAIN, ZEDS DEAD! Of course, they would sneak in The Beatles with “Yesterday.” Jesus Christ, did they know my parents or what? The raspy voice of Jules from The Strokes made its way in there as well. A quiet smirk from the pimply teenager inside of me emerged for just a split second. They really do know me….
Elton and Star Wars… no, they couldn’t possibly tie those two together with Timbaland. Yes, yes, they did very much so. When they hit me with the “We don’t need no education” part from Pink Floyd’s The Wall, I almost shut the song off. Immaculately blending it together with Kendrick Lamar’s “Bitch, don’t kill my vibe” was enough.
How could this one single track perfectly encapsulate my entire generation/upbringing in just over four minutes? They even managed to sneak The Simpsons in there. I thought it would have been a Disco Stu excerpt, but their clip fit perfectly with the complex message of the lyrics: the strange entanglement of growing up while still remaining grounded and dreaming big, just as we once did as children…
Just as elegantly as the song opens, it closes in the exact same way, featuring a famous scene from the Twilight Zone episode “Time Enough at Last.” With so many samples throughout the track that I lost count, these thousand words or so don’t seem to do this song justice. Only highlighting the ones that really resonated with me from my childhood.
I’m sure every listener has their own opinion on which sample speaks to them the most. Watch “Channel Flipping” on Zeds Dead’s YouTube channel and see which clip takes you back.
After the review: the album and “Channel Flipping 2”
When this review was first written in February 2025, “Channel Flipping” was part of the buildup to Zeds Dead’s then-upcoming sophomore album. Return to the Spectrum of Intergalactic Happiness subsequently arrived on March 7, 2025.
In November 2025, Zeds Dead also published “Channel Flipping 2: Only You,” a longer audiovisual collage that extended the same attention to memory, television imagery and music sampling. The follow-up offers another perspective on the ideas introduced in the original piece.
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