this is where i will talk about lisa music way too much. other pages will be for other stuff about lisa probably bc i hyperfixate and cannot stop thinking about it at all ever.
this is the track that plays before and during the sequence where you as brad have to get in a bulldozer and run a bunch of people over. it seems like a kind of goofy and comedic sequence, but if you put it in the context of the rest of the game, especially keeping brad's joy addiction in mind, it becomes pretty fuckin dark.
in the beginning of this section, you're climbing up and around metal bars to collect items and fight guys in football helmets who arguably aren't doing anything harmful (except for the dudes throwing hammers at you), you just automatically enter an attack sequence when you run into them. this happens in other parts of the game but it still contributes to brad slipping into violence being his default response to interactions, and this is reflected later in joyful when buddy experiences something similar (the "fight him?" prompt popping up when in the peaceful village, for example). and if you listen closely (i recommend putting headphones on), you can hear the trumpet that is driving him and the other mutants to violent madness. i didn't pick up on this until my third or fourth playthru of the game and it blew my fuckin mind. you can read it as yado controlling brad during this sequence, or if not controlling, influencing the violence.
these two tracks play at the very beginning of the game and in a flashback respectively. both appear after/alongside/before we see bits of growing up in an abusive household. "bradley" plays after young brad goes into his room and starts to cry. "bradley baby" plays during a flashback where brad encounters baby lisa in a crib. the foreboding drone of "bradley" and the chilling plucks of "bradley baby" both serve to drive it home that something about these sequences is very wrong. "bradley" also starts playing in the first scene with buddy in area 2 after the wally fight just as she starts talking about brad's joy addiction.
but what specifically indicates the dread, the horror, the pain and injustice of brad and his childhood is the opening notes of each piece, which has the dies irae, a motif in music throughout history that plays during sequences of pain, fear, anguish, horror. you can hear it when luke finds his burned home in a new hope; when simba runs away from the hyenas after mufasa's death in the lion king; and in multiple songs in sweeny todd. when i realized that the first four notes of both "bradley" and "bradley baby" are the dies irae, the intensity of those scenes and how brad felt during them hit me even harder. it was a brilliant addition that perfectly fits the scenes where the songs play.
lisa's motif that plays in the title screens of first and painful occurs again and again in painful. it plays in any area where you can sleep and in areas where brad sees lisa, and in other random areas that don't necessarily feature her, but the tracks indicate that he is thinking of her or is reminded of her in some way by something about the area he's in. the different iterations of her theme show how, regardless of the life he's lived, regardless of the world he's in, lisa follows brad everywhere and she has for his entire life.
all of the clearest iterations of lisa's theme are in songs titled "xyz call", but it appears often in tracks with different titles, remixed and altered to fit a different mood. "the highway king" shifts into a lighter, boppy version of her theme. in "soft skin", the song that plays during fights with joy mutants. it's very quiet, but you can hear it in deep hums. this makes sense in retrospect knowing that brad, as a joy addict, is destined to mutate, and it all returns to how her abuse and death affected him.
the "call" motif is absent from joyful because joyful is buddy's story, and she's been indirectly affected by lisa through brad and buzzo, but she probably has no or only a vague idea of who lisa is. this makes sense in canon and metatextually, as buddy is determined to write her own story and is trying to leave her past behind her, and there's no room for someone else's motif in her theme. joyful's soundtrack in general breaks fully from painful's. the only exception is "winner winner what's four dinner boys", as it's included in a bit of a silly scene where lisa's theme is constructed out of a lot of different instruments, it's good!