The Squip Song Lyrics – Be More Chill

Song Overview

I still remember the first time The Squip Song blared through my headphones back in late-2015; a brash three-and-a-half-minute sales pitch for a super-computer pill that promised to upgrade your social firmware. Fast-forward to May 3, 2019, when the Broadway cast album finally dropped and the track steamed up my queue all over again.

Personal Review

Even without the neon lights of the Lyceum Theatre, the recording throttles forward on a syncopated, almost infomercial groove. Gerard Canonico’s vocal has this twitchy grin, equal parts carnival barker and cautionary tale. Those glitching ensemble “ah-ah-ah” pads feel like someone hot-wired Talking Heads into a Sega Genesis. Production-wise, Charlie Rosen’s brass stabs punch through like popup ads, while that sly theremin slithers in the back, hinting at sci-fi doom lurking beneath Rich’s bravado.

Key takeaway? The track weaponises teenage self-loathing, packages it in J-tech mystique and sells it back with a jingle you will hum against your better judgment. The lyrics may sound outrageous, yet any kid who has prayed for an instant personality upgrade hears the truth between the jokes.

Song Meaning and Annotations

At first listen, The Squip Song feels like pure exposition: Rich Goranski recounts how a quantum pill from Japan turbo-charged his journey from dweeb to demigod. Dig deeper and you find a satire on the self-help industrial complex, dressed in power-pop theatrics. The meter swings between march-like triplets and hip-hop syncopation, mirroring Rich’s manic sales pitch.

Historically, Joe Iconis wrote the number in 2013, riffing on late-night shopping-channel cadences. The Off-Broadway cast album surfaced in October 2015, where it quietly clocked millions of streams, helping the entire score crack Billboard’s Cast Album Top 10 by mid-2017.

Musically, the piece fuses ska-adjacent horn punches with a crunchy pop-punk backbeat, then sprinkles in 1980s video-game arpeggios. The emotional arc barrels from self-disgust to swaggering evangelism, before ending on a cliff-hanger chant: “A SQUIP! A SQUIP! A SQUIP!” A dopamine rush, then dead air—exactly like many tech launches.

“Quantum nano-technology CPU… it implants in your brain and it tells you what to do.”

The lyric drips with pseudo-scientific buzzwords—“quantum,” “nano-technology”—the same language used today by dodgy nootropics ads. Rich’s repetition of “then” functions like a stuttering CPU boot sequence, a stylistic wink at the very chip now commanding him.

Verse Highlights

Verse 1

Rich paints a humiliating freshman portrait—failed sexts, hallway face-plants—cueing listeners to relate before he pivots to the miracle cure.

Chorus

The ensemble’s chant, doubled in vocoder, sells the pill with missionary zeal. Notice how the horns land right after “cool!”—a musical fist pump.

Bridge

The tempo yanks back and forth, mirroring internal fragmentation: Rich or SQUIP? Salesman or victim? We never get a clean answer.

Annotations

The Squip Song lyrics swirl like a late-night infomercial crashed into a teenage diary, all neon promise and jittery dread. Onstage, Rich turns the high-school hallway into his pulpit, pitching a miracle microchip to a wide-eyed Jeremy. The scene crackles with robo-rhythm, adolescent overshare, and that unmistakable Be More Chill pulse: anxious, sardonic, strangely hopeful.

Overview

Rich opens with a confession wrapped in self-deprecation:

Freshman year.

Nobody remembers him, least of all Jeremy. That amnesia is the point—he was invisible until the mysterious SQUIP rewired his social circuitry. The moment frames high school as a memory hole where the uncool simply vanish, reinforcing the song’s urgency: upgrade or disappear.

Character Dynamics

Before the pill, Rich’s world was bleak.

Good times would only soar by.

Those “good times” escaped because, as lore hints, an abusive home life gnawed at him, triggering suicidal spirals. By mirroring Jeremy’s own hallway pratfalls—

Every time I'd walk the hallway / I would trip.

—Rich forges instant camaraderie, a sales tactic as much as empathy. Even his raw admission—

I was gross.

—feels orchestrated, as though the SQUIP itself whispers, “Relate to the mark, hook him deep.”

Then, then, then, then, then I got a SQUIP

The stuttered drum-roll builds like a slot machine about to pay out. Each “then” is Rich glitching under the pill’s influence, the same digital hiccup we’ll later hear in Jeremy’s meltdown.

The pitch arrives in 8-bit gospel:

• Gray, oblong pill — looks like a Wintergreen Tic-Tac, tastes like destiny (and possibly metal).
• Quantum nano-technology CPU — technobabble turned lullaby, sung by a chorus pitched just shy of Auto-Tune.
• Travels through your blood until it implants in your brain — a vampire nanobot with a customer-service voice.

Desperation drips from his past attempts at connection:

As every female could attest / My sexting was a futile quest.

The annotation reminds us that Rich later identifies as bisexual once his implant shuts down, complicating the teen-movie stereotype of “guy who hits on every girl.” Popularity, not romance, was always the prize.

Thematic Elements

The language of despair—

I was so suicidal.

—merges with tech jargon when Rich cries,

I was stagnant and idle.

Those words double as computer states, a sly hint that the SQUIP now frames his entire existence: processes paused, waiting for new code.

Repetition builds tension:

Then, then / Then, then … I got a SQUIP.

Like a drum roll before a magic trick, each then raises the curtain on forbidden tech “so secret you can’t even Google it.” In the original novel the devices are illegal in New Jersey; danger is half their allure.

Musical & Performance Techniques

Rich chants,

This is some top-secret, can’t-even-look-it-up-on-the-internet shit.

The line lands on a hushed expletive, voices glitching as though the hardware in his skull momentarily seizes the mic. When he trumpets,

It’s from Japan!

he taps our pop-culture reflex: if it’s futuristic, it must be Tokyo-born.

The sales pitch unfolds in staccato bullet points—

It’s a gray, oblong pill.

Jeremy later compares it to a Wintergreen Tic Tac, an image equal parts innocent and ominous. The whispered echo—

Drugs.

—floats through the mix, only for Rich to retort,

It’s better than drugs, Jeremy.

From that moment the orchestration digitizes: backing vocalists blip in percussive “Ah-ah-ah” bursts while Rich’s timbre fractures like corrupted audio. Later in the show, Jeremy, Michael, and the ensemble mimic these jerky hand motions and micro-glitches, implying every SQUIP shares a networked hive mind.

A two-note motif—

Helps you to be cool! / It helps you rule!

—recurs across The Squip Song, “Jeremy’s Theme,” and “Halloween,” silently announcing the implant’s presence. Its cheerful intervals mask predatory intent.

Historical & Production Notes

Fans of the Two River Theater premiere remember an extra verse now excised from the Broadway cast recording, a casualty of runtime trims and narrative streamlining. Such cuts underscore how malleable Be More Chill remains, evolving alongside its rabid online fandom.

Performance quirks survive editing. Rich’s shouted stutter—

SQUIP-IP-IP!

—arrives with a guttural grunt, the sonic equivalent of a software crash. The final exclamation—

A SQUIP!

—is held so long the ensemble drops out, the spotlight narrowing as his voice swells from cajoling to almost feral. In that suspended note, you hear both the promise and the peril of surrendering your agency to a pill with a quantum CPU.

Conclusion? None Needed.

The scene simply freezes on that last sustained cry, leaving the audience—and Jeremy—half-thrilled, half-terrified. The Squip Song lyrics don’t end; they linger like residual static, whispering that salvation and self-destruction might arrive in the same shiny capsule.

Song Credits

• Featured: Gerard Canonico
• Producers: Kurt Deutsch, Joe Iconis, Ian Kagey, Emily Marshall, Charlie Rosen
• Composer / Lyricist: Joe Iconis
• Release Date: May 3, 2019 (Broadway album)
• Genre: Broadway-Pop, Techno-Showtune
• Instruments: Drums, percussion, electric guitar, ukulele, bass, keyboards, woodwinds, brass section, theremin, vocoder
• Label: Ghostlight / Sh-K-Boom Records
• Mood: Hyperactive, conspiratorial
• Length: 3 min 20 sec (Broadway version)
• Track #: 5 on Be More Chill (Original Broadway Cast Recording)
• Language: English
• Poetic Meter: Predominantly trochaic with deliberate glitches
• Copyrights: © 2019 Two River Theater Company / Ghostlight Records

Songs Exploring Themes of Popularity & Identity

While Rich peddles a pharmaco-algorithm for coolness, other showtunes tackle the same insecurity from different angles.

“Popular” – Wicked. Glinda’s bubbly tutorial on social optics is the sugar-coated aunt to The Squip Song. Both numbers are sales pitches, but where Rich hawks invasive tech, Glinda relies on hair flips and confidence. Different era, same pressure cooker.

“You Will Be Found” – Dear Evan Hansen. Instead of a pill, Evan weaponises social media empathy. The soaring choral hook promises inclusion, yet underneath lies manufactured narrative—echoing the SQUIP’s scripted persona.

“Stick to the Status Quo” – High School Musical. Here the entire cafeteria polices deviation. No singular guru; the mob itself is the SQUIP, chanting conformity into every clique.

Questions and Answers

Is the SQUIP based on real technology?

No—Iconis exaggerates existing bio-chip research for dramatic effect; the pill remains fictional.

Why does Rich’s voice glitch during live performances?

Directorial choice: audio warbles signal the SQUIP overriding his speech patterns, foreshadowing Act II malfunctions.

Did the song chart independently?

It never cracked mainstream singles charts, but helped propel the cast album into Billboard’s Cast Album Top 10 in July 2017.

Are there notable covers?

Yes—fan vocalist ChadWick released a rock-leaning cover in January 2024; countless TikTok creators splice the chorus for glow-up memes.

Is a film version in the works?

As of 2025, a feature adaptation remains in active development after initial announcements in 2018.

Awards and Chart Positions

Year	Honor	Result
2019	Tony Awards – Best Original Score (Joe Iconis)	Nominated
2019	Drama Desk – Outstanding Musical	Nominated
2017	Billboard Cast Album Chart – Peak Position	Top 10

How to Sing?

Rich’s range sits roughly from B₂ up to G₄; chest voice carries most lines, but the chorus demands mix placement for sustained “SQUIP!” belts. Keep consonants percussive—notice Canonico’s clipped “p” in “SQUIP” driving the beat. Tempo hovers around 132 BPM; practise with a metronome, then add micro-hesitations before “then, then, then” for dramatic stutter. Breath support is crucial when leaping from whispered asides to full-throated shouts within two bars.

Fan and Media Reactions

“The moment the horns drop on ‘Helps you to be cool!’ I feel personally called out.” —YouTube user @theatregremlin, 2023

“Iconis turned every teen insecurity into a techno-horror lullaby.” —Front Mezz Junkies blog review

“Can confirm: this song was my gateway drug to Broadway fandom.” —TikTok creator @basicallybway

“Rich’s glitches give me literal chills, pun intended.” —Reddit user u/stageleft42

“Hard not to cheer for a tune that rhymes ‘quantum’ with ‘want ’em.’” —Local jazz critic, New Jersey Star-Ledger