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Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Track of the Moment: Somebody That I Used to Know (ft. Kimbra) by Gotye


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.


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