The Rare Occasions – “Notion”
The song that sat in the dark until the world caught up.
There are tracks that blow up overnight — radio bangers, forced hits, algorithm-fed noise. And then there are songs like “Notion.” The kind that sits in your playlist quietly for years until one random night, it walks up, taps your shoulder, and asks, “You still pretending you’re fine?”
This track wasn’t supposed to be mainstream. It wasn’t chasing viral moments or radio spins. It just existed — raw, melodic, and unsettling in all the right ways. Released in 2016, “Notion” was one of those underground gems you kept to yourself. But fast forward to 2020s TikTok, and suddenly everyone’s pacing their room at 2AM mouthing lyrics they didn’t even know they needed.
Because here’s the truth: this song doesn’t feel like a single — it feels like a mirror.
It opens soft, but there’s something creeping underneath. That guitar riff? It doesn’t just hum, it haunts. It sounds like memories you thought you buried. And when the chorus drops, it doesn’t explode — it implodes. That’s what makes it hit harder. You’re not dancing to this. You’re confronting things.
“Notion” isn’t selling hope. It’s not your morning motivation anthem. It’s the track for when you’ve done everything right and still feel wrong. For when you’re sitting in your room, lights off, scrolling through old photos wondering how the hell you got here.
And when it finally went viral, it wasn’t because the label pushed it. It was because people felt it. Someone made a video with a mood, someone else stitched it, and the next thing you know, this track was laced into millions of moments — breakups, breakdowns, nostalgia edits, you name it.
It became a sound for the generation that’s tired of pretending they’re okay. A track that doesn’t sugarcoat life or slap a filter on pain. The lyrics don’t offer easy answers — they just say, “Yeah, same here.”
The video? Wild, surreal, cult-ish chaos that doesn’t explain itself. But that’s exactly the point. Life doesn’t explain itself either. The weirdness in the video doesn’t take away from the message — it adds to the discomfort. It mirrors the song’s whole identity: beautiful confusion wrapped in sound.
People aren’t just listening to “Notion.” They’re returning to it. Years later. Because it never left them. That’s the mark of a real song. Not the streams, not the views — but the fact that when everything goes quiet, this is what people come back to.
So no, this isn’t your typical indie success story. This is a song that stayed buried until the world finally slowed down long enough to hear it.
And if you’re here now — whether you searched it, remembered it, or got hit with it randomly — just know this:
You didn’t find Notion.
It found you.