One of many environmentally conscious songs by the band, “2.02 Killer Year” (pronounced two point oh two killer year) is Butterfly 3000’s look at the world. The song is centered on rising sea levels due to climate change, yet contrasts that subject with fun lyrics about surfing, while also alluding to The Beach Boys. While Butterfly 3000 is a mostly happy album centered on hedonism and the happiness the world can bring, “2.02 Killer Year” showcases the opposite side of the coin — that our own ability to find happiness can numb us to the pressing issues in life that threaten our lives. You can only live ignorantly for so long. The title of the song is a reference to the significant global events of the year 2020, using a pun based on ‘kiloyear’; ie. a period of 1,000 years that is often used to denote significant events that occur across time scales of that magnitude, such as the 4.2-kiloyear event.
Stu talked to NME about its unique tone: “This is one of the songs on the record that does have some form of a darker side to it. I mean, there’s a lot of deeply anxious lyrics on this record but generally what we were trying to do was make something that felt good… I wanted to do a satirical thing where, y’know, I’m singing about global warming, the tides are rising. Right, let’s all go surfing!”
In a Stereogum interview he noted the song’s important placement on the album, describing it as a look outwards at the world rather than at the personal issues of the previous songs: “This is the little section of the record that starts zooming out. You’ve kind of gone inward for a while, and on ‘Catching Smoke,’ you’re on this kind of trip, but now you start thinking about the world. Kiloyears are times in Earth’s history where there’s been climatic events or extinction events, and I suppose ‘2.02 Killer Year’ is a play on that — meaning that we’re in one right now. The song is about planet Earth being in one of those transitory states, and how spooky that is.”
The song was recorded by Ambrose (percussion/vocals), Cavs (drums) and Stu (synthesizer/vocals/percussion/Mellotron) and was released on June 11th, 2021 as part of Butterfly 3000.
It later appeared in a full album video filmed at the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles released on the 24th.
A music video for the song, directed and designed by Sophie Koko with animation from Laser Days Studio (Jack Wedge & WIll Freudenheim), was released on August 2nd, 2021.
It starts with a large butterfly laying eggs and flying off. The eggs hatch purple men wearing ties who begin to dance to the song before the video cuts to a work environment where everyone opens up suitcases. While the others pull out sandwiches, one opens the case to find tons of butterflies which fly out and scare it, leading the purple man to jump off a cliff into the void. It then cuts back to the large butterfly pollinating a flower, before showing to the purple man who jumped off the cliff — now with butterfly wings and antennae. Ambrose’s part features a green, long nosed feminine group of creatures singing the part. The video ends with many of the purple men jumping off the cliff while the rest lay on the ground with butterflies flying out of their mouths and eye sockets.
According to an It’s Nice That’s article about the Butterfly 3000 videos, Koko had never heard of the band before working with them, but said she was drawing lots of butterflies at the time of their collaboration. Drawn to the dark lyrics of the song, Koko began to work on the idea for the video and centered it around business. “Business people crack me up, I wanted them to be boneless so they would fall in a nice way, briefcases are funny, lunch is always a laugh.” She then collaborated with Laser Days Studio who brought the concepts and characters to life with real-time rendering.
Like all Butterfly 3000 videos, it would be featured on the Blu-Ray Butterfly 3000: Ocular Edition.
The song would only receive one new version on the remix album Butterfly 3001.
It was done by Bullant (aka Joey) and was titled “2.02 Killer Year (Bullant’s Fuck Mike Love Remix);” its title taking aim at the controversial Beach Boys member. It’s one of the longest on the album at eight minutes in length and features distorted vocals and a jungle drum beat alongside shifting synths.
“2.02 Killer Year” has never been played live.