YMMV / Imogen Heap

• Awesome Music:
  • "Hide and Seek" and "Getting Scared" are chillingly awesome.
  • "The Walk."
  • "The Moment I Said It" and "Shine", too.
  • From Ellipse, "Swoon", "Earth", "Aha!" and "Bad Body Double".
  • "My Secret Friend", a song she made with Chris Corner of IAMX.
  • "Tidal" and "Just for Now"; just see this live performance!
  • "2-1". It was originally going to be put on the soundtrack of Prince Caspian until it was decided that it was too dark.
  • "Headlock" is also rather spunky. It's B-side track, "Mic Check" is also pretty awesome, despite (or because of) it mostly being Heap seemingly scat-singing to herself.
• Chorus-Only Song: Can you listen to "Hide and Seek" without skipping to the part "hmm what you saaaaay..."?
• Covered Up: "Aha!" has gotten this treatment by Pentatonix. It's very common to see people who first heard their version.
• Funny Moments: All of her vBlogs have this, but special mention goes to the 39th blog, where after she informs us that she's finished the album, we get about a minute of her and various other people saying 'She's finished!' in various situations (including painting a wall, lifting weights, and running around the garden with an umbrella.)
• Growing the Beard: Speak for Yourself is considerably more polished and well-made than the rough, raw iMegaphone. It also has "Hide and Seek" on it.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • Her vBlogs, which chronicle both the making of Ellipse and Imogen's renovations of her family home. Hearing the love and pride in her voice as she talks about her house... it's really sweet.
  • "Tiny Human", the song she wrote for her daughter Scout. She tells the listener her parental duties made her forget happiness, she compares herself to the ruins of Pompeii... and then concludes that she can't do anything but love her child unconditionally.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Hide and Seek" was played during the climax of a The O.C. episode. The Saturday Night Live sketch "Dear Sister" parodies the use of "Hide and Seek", and the song begins to play every time someone got shot (which was a lot). Now you can find a lot of Dear Sister parodies on YouTube. There are even fad crossovers: "Mmm WHAT YOU SAY!!"
  • The overexposure led by the mutation have led to some feeling that the internet ruined "Hide and Seek". On the other hand, even those who found the song after its mutation, with only the meme as context, still very much enjoy it. At least some do. A stellar AMV uses a remix to good effect here.
  • As mentioned in Sampled Up, Lil B and Clams Casino's sampling of "Just for Now" has spawned a number of Youtubers attempting to remake the beat or otherwise sampling the song.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • "Rake It In" — there's about twenty seconds in the middle that consists of Immi thumping away on the piano, combined with carnivalesque music and the sound of screams... And when you combine that with the lyrics...
  • The beginning and end of "Leave Me to Love". It sounds like a demon got hold of recording equipment.
• Refrain from Assuming: "Hide and Seek" is not named "Whatcha Say" — that's the name of a Jason Derulo song that heavily samples the song. The song is also not called "Dear Sister" (that one's the name of a SNL sketch).
• Sampled Up:
  • "Hide and Seek" sometimes gets this from Jason Derulo's "Whatcha Say", which heavily uses Imogen's song.
  • "Just for Now" was sampled by producer Clams Casino on at least two of his beats — "I'm God" by Lil B, and Demons by A$AP Rocky. This actually helped get a few hip-hop fans into Imogen Heap.
• Signature Song: "Hide and Seek".
• Shrug of God: Imogen Heap is not telling us what "Hide and Seek" is about, no matter how often her fans ask.
• Tear Jerker:
  • "Hide and Seek", even with the "Dear Sister" connotations.
  • "The Moment I Said It".
  • Her cover of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah".
  • The end of "Little Bird".
  • For some in an unrequited love, "Goodnight and Go" can be horribly depressing.
  "Why'd you have to be so cute?
  It's impossible to ignore you.
  Must you make me laugh so much?
  It's bad enough we get along so well...
  Say goodnight and go."
  • "Speeding Cars", which was assumingly about her brother who killed himself.
• Tough Act to Follow: While she's certainly still fond of it, she believes that what made "Hide and Seek", arguably her most famous song, special is impossible to recreate and therefore she's not ever going to try to do so.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: More than a few new listeners have mistaken her singing voice for a man's. It's somewhat low sounding.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Originally, she wrote "2-1" for the soundtrack to the PrinceCaspian film, but it was rejected and the track ended up on Ellipse.
  • Same thing happened to "Entanglement" for the film of "Breaking Dawn". Apparently, the lyrics were considered too raunchy.
  • In 2006, she had been asked to score a documentary about flamingos and accepted, but plans fell through so she focused her energy on Ellipse.
• The Woobie: The protagonist of "The Moment I Said It".

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