How
someone hasn’t already written up a piece on this song, I’m not sure. But I’ll
tackle it.
If
you haven’t heard Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know”, you’ve been locked up
in Maynard’s basement for way too long. (I’m sure Bruce Willis is sorry for that,
but it takes a really long time to pick out the right weapon). The Youtube
music video has almost 130 million views in 8 months, and that doesn’t count
the various lyric videos and covers posted online, nor radio and MTV plays. To
put it in perspective, Rebecca Black’s Friday has about 167 million views in 4
months that it’s been out, and Kony2012 only has roughly 85 million views in 3
weeks. So it’s fairly popular, especially given the fact that it really hasn’t
had any social media push, unlike those other 2 videos.
What
really drew in me was the simplicity of the song. It’s just a few basic guitar
chords, a couple keys on a toy piano or xylophone, a familiar drum beat, and a
strange synthesizer during the chorus. But Gotye layers them on top of each other
so perfectly that the song feels so much more complex than it is, making each
listen an Easter Egg hunt for a new instrument. And Gotye’s voice is fantastic.
Very relaxed during each verse where he’s rationalizing all the aspects of the
relationship and break up, but he becomes so intense when the chorus hits and
he begins to sing about how an ex-girlfriend cut all ties with him and pretend like
they didn’t know each other.
The
rest of Making Mirrors, the album
responsible for this song, is still pop-y, but not nearly as much as this song. It’s also a very
experimental pop sound that relies on a lot of interesting sounds and layering
that instrumentation, and is definitely not a Teenage Dream. So check out other songs off the album, and thank me
later.
No comments:
Post a Comment