The 37-Minute Mystery: Why Deftones’ ‘MX’ Is So Long (And 3 Other Massive ‘MX’ Lengths Explained)

The question "Why is MX so long?" is a modern digital-age riddle, one that often baffles fans of 90s music and travelers looking at a map of Mexico. As of December 17, 2025, the answer depends entirely on which "MX" you are referring to: a legendary alt-metal song with a 30-minute silent gap, or a massive, newly completed infrastructure project spanning over a thousand kilometers. The primary source of the confusion is a deliberate artistic choice from the CD era that clashes dramatically with today’s streaming algorithms, creating an artificially inflated runtime that has puzzled millions of listeners for decades.

The most common and curious interpretation of this query points directly to a specific track on a classic album. However, to provide complete topical authority, we must explore all the major entities that answer this question, from the world of music to the world of global infrastructure.

The 37-Minute Streaming Anomaly: Deftones' 'MX' and the Hidden Track Era

The core mystery of "why is MX so long" originates from the final track on Deftones' seminal 1997 album, Around the Fur. On platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube, the track "MX" is often listed with a runtime of approximately 37 to 40 minutes, a staggering length for a song that is musically only about 4 minutes and 52 seconds long.

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The Anatomy of the Length: Silence, 'Bong Hit,' and 'Damone'

The extraordinary length is not a mistake but a relic of the CD manufacturing process in the 1990s. The track "MX" is actually a composite track that contains three distinct segments:

• 0:00 – 4:52: The actual song "MX," a blistering track featuring guest vocals from Max Cavalera (Sepultura, Soulfly).
• 4:52 – 19:32 (Approx.): A vast, deliberate stretch of complete silence.
• 19:32 – 19:55 (Approx.): A short, uncredited audio clip known by fans as "Bong Hit" or an answering machine recording.
• 19:55 – 32:00 (Approx.): Another extensive period of silence.
• 32:00 – End: The true hidden track, the song "Damone."

The track "Damone" is the main reward for listeners who waited through the silence. It is a full, powerful song that was intentionally buried to surprise dedicated fans who let the CD spin to the very end. This practice of including "ghost tracks" or "hidden tracks" was a popular trend in the alternative and Nu Metal scenes of the 90s, utilized by bands like Nirvana, Green Day, and Nine Inch Nails.

The length of the track on digital services is determined by the original CD's metadata, which combined all the audio, including the massive silent gaps, into one single track. Streaming platforms simply read this long runtime, presenting the 37-minute anomaly to a new generation of listeners who are unfamiliar with the archaic format of the CD era.

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The Mega-Infrastructure 'MX': Why Mexico's Tren Maya is So Long

A completely different, yet equally valid, answer to the "why is MX so long" query relates to the country code for Mexico (MX) and its most ambitious modern infrastructure project. The Tren Maya (Maya Train) is a massive, newly constructed intercity railway project in the Yucatán Peninsula.

The Staggering Length of the Tren Maya

The primary reason the "MX train" is so long is due to its sheer scale and the vast area it is intended to cover. The Tren Maya network is approximately 1,554 kilometers (966 miles) long, traversing five different states in the southeastern region of Mexico, including Campeche, Quintana Roo, Yucatán, Tabasco, and Chiapas.

This immense length is necessary to achieve its primary goals: to connect major cities, tourist hotspots like Cancún and Tulum, and ancient Mayan archaeological sites like Palenque, facilitating both passenger and freight service.

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The project, which began construction in June 2020, is a multi-billion dollar investment designed to transform the regional economy and promote ecotourism in a previously underserved area of the country. Sections of the railway began operation in late 2023, with the full network opening in subsequent stages.

Other Long 'MX' Entities: From Official Names to Technical Records

The abbreviation 'MX' can also refer to other entities whose "length" is notable, solidifying the topical authority surrounding this curious keyword.

The Length of the Official Name: Estados Unidos Mexicanos

While the country is commonly known as Mexico, its official, full legal name is the United Mexican States (Spanish: Estados Unidos Mexicanos). This long, formal name reflects its federal structure, comprising thirty-two states, similar to the United States of America. The length of this official name is a formal and historical necessity, defining its political organization as a federal republic.

The Length of Time for MX Record Propagation

In the technical world, an MX (Mail Exchanger) record is a type of DNS record that specifies the mail server responsible for accepting email messages on behalf of a domain name. The "length" of an MX record often refers not to its character count, but to the Time-to-Live (TTL), which dictates how long a DNS resolver should cache the record.

More relevant to the 'length' question is the time it takes for a change to an MX record to take effect across the internet, known as propagation. Due to the distributed nature of DNS servers, updates to MX records can often take between 24 and 48 hours to fully propagate globally. This "long" propagation time is a source of frustration for systems administrators, making it a technical answer to why a change involving an "MX" can take so long.

The Cultural Significance of the Long Track

Ultimately, the most famous answer to "why is MX so long" is the artistic one. The practice of hiding tracks with long silent periods, as Deftones did with "MX," was a powerful cultural phenomenon of the 1990s. It was a pre-internet Easter egg—a secret handshake between the artist and the dedicated fan. The silence was a deliberate barrier, rewarding only those who bought the physical CD and committed to listening to the final, lengthy track in its entirety.

Today, the long runtime of "MX" serves as a digital-age archaeological site. It is a piece of digital detritus that points back to an era of physical media, where the length of a track was determined not by a playlist algorithm, but by the physical capacity of a compact disc. The 37-minute length is not a mistake; it is a time capsule containing a song, a joke, and a hidden gem, all separated by the vast, quiet expanse of a bygone musical format.