Why “God’s Chariots” Is the Most Perfect Song Ever

Five years later, I'm still not over it

I first heard “God’s Chariots” during lockdown. It was September 2020, and I was doing what I always do when I’m restless: digging through Bandcamp like it’s a library and I’ve got all night. I don’t even remember what I was looking for, just that I was clicking on anything new, trying to feel something. And then this track started. “God’s Chariots” by Oklou. I remember going still. The kind of stillness where you forget to blink. It felt like something cracking open. Like a portal.

At the time, we were all tucked inside, cut off from each other in ways that felt unnatural and surreal. The days blurred. The silence got loud. There was this collective ache we didn’t know what to do with. And somehow, this song sounded exactly like that feeling. Like floating inside a dream you couldn’t quite wake from. Five years later, I still haven’t moved on from it.There’s so many reasons this song made such a lasting impression on me. It’s not just the production, though that part is absolutely perfect. The synths feel wide and weightless. Her voice sounds like it's floating just above the ground. The whole track has this quiet pull, like you’re drifting through something foggy and sacred.

But it’s the emotional atmosphere of the song that holds me. The lyrics aren’t literal. They feel like pieces of a feeling, scattered across a dream. There’s heat, disorientation, falling, wanting to be close to someone but never quite getting there. Lines like “I wish I could only feel the ground beneath me” and “day in, day out, I float down south” make it feel like the floor’s gone. Like she’s searching for something steady to hold on to, and can’t find it.

That feeling of weightlessness, of drifting through a moment that doesn’t have edges; that’s what 2020 felt like to me. She sings about wanting to be one with someone, about craving that closeness so deeply it starts to blur where one person ends and the other begins. And near the end, she says it. “Goddess of a lonely night.” It’s not a full image, just a flash, but it lands because it names the feeling.

Oklou has said the song is a fantasy space, a place you go to escape. But also a space where the loneliness gets so thick you almost lose yourself inside it. That duality is what makes the song hit so hard. It doesn’t run away from isolation. It lets it bloom. In 2020, so many of us were doing the same thing. Making imaginary spaces to stay sane. Creating little routines that felt like rituals. Trying to find softness in all the quiet. “God’s Chariots” felt like proof that someone else understood.

The production is light but full. There’s room to breathe. You can feel her classical training in the background, in the piano and cello, but it doesn’t overpower anything. Everything is precise without being rigid. It reminds me a bit of James Blake in the way it balances intimacy with texture. She worked with Casey MQ and Sega Bodega on it too. You can tell the collaborators were fully aligned. The song just sounds intentional, front to back.

I’ve seen people talk about how this song broke them. How they looped it for hours without realizing it. How it made them feel held in some strange, necessary way. Same. I’ve had this song in my life for five years now and it still feels new, still catches me off guard, still feels like I’m hearing it in a time when I need it most.

So yes, I’ve raved about Oklou before. And I probably will again. Because “God’s Chariots” is the most perfect song I’ve ever heard. It holds space for the kind of loneliness that’s hard to name. The kind we were all living through in 2020, and maybe still carry somewhere quiet. It’s one of the few songs that’s made me feel less alone, just by existing.

Still not over it. Probably never will be.

stay noisy friends,

xoxo
saint ✿ virgil