I can always tell when a song has caught the imagination of a lot of people because I start to hear about it from my guitar students. \u00a0It doesn’t even have to be a guitar song per se, but as soon as my students begin referring to it, especially if the students are of different ages, it piques my interest.<\/p>\n
Such was the case with Pumped Up Kicks by Foster The People. \u00a0It’s a very simple song, musically, with a little bass\/guitar riff repeating through most of the song and the same four-chord progression. \u00a0For simplicity’s sake, I have the guitar capo’d on the 1st fret so my beginner students can play it using Em, D, G and A, one measure per chord. \u00a0The bass riff extends over that four-chord progression as well, but you can also play it on guitar, as some of my more advanced students like to do.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
But the lyrics belie the chord progression underneath them:<\/p>\n
Robert's got a quick hand\r\n He'll look around the room he won't tell you his plan\r\n Got a rolled cigarette\r\n Hangin' out his mouth, he's a cowboy kid\r\n Yeah, found a six-shooter gun\r\n In his dad's closet hidden with a box of fun things\r\n I don't even know what\r\nBut he's comin' for you, yeah he's comin for you, hey<\/pre>\nCHORUS:\r\n All the other kids\r\n With the pumped up kicks\r\n You'd better run, better run\r\n Outrun my gun\r\n All the other kids\r\n With the pumped up kicks\r\n You'd better run, better run\r\n Faster than my bullet<\/pre>\nJoni Mitchell once talked about the pathos of songs and how it is often created by marrying “sad” lyrics with “happy” music. \u00a0That isn’t a direct quote, but something I heard her say in an interview about her songwriting a long time ago. \u00a0In the case of Pumped Up Kicks, the lyrics are rather violent, talking about a brooding kid coming to school with a gun that he got from his father’s closet. \u00a0Sound familiar? \u00a0Not only did he find the gun, he found it with a bunch of other “fun things”. \u00a0He warns the rich kids with the “pumped up kicks”, the high-end shoes, that they’d better outrun his gun, and be faster than his bullet. \u00a0But underneath this strangely dark lyric, the chorus melody is an upbeat, almost happy ditty. \u00a0And it works.<\/p>\n
I’ve heard this song\u00a0peripherally, in stores and on TV shows and I certainly recognized it when a student said she wanted to learn it. \u00a0But it wasn’t until I examined it lyrically did I realize what it was about. \u00a0In fact, I would venture to guess that a lot of people would probably find the song really appealing and not have paid much attention to the meaning of the lyrics right away. \u00a0Once the message reveals itself the song takes on a whole new dimension, but as disturbing as the topic is, it doesn’t lose it’s upbeat quality.<\/p>\n
Sometimes the production of a song can do a lot to drive the feeling of it. \u00a0This recording employs\u00a0a “radio” effect on the vocal (when the voice sounds like it’s coming out of a cheap radio) in the verses, creating a kind of detached, strangeness to the dialogue. \u00a0And there’s that ever-present, simple little lick and the bright chorus with multiple vocals having an anthem-like quality that definitely keeps it memorable.<\/p>\n
When songwriters sit down to pen a song, the chances are that most of the time they aren’t thinking about things like “pathos” and production, it just comes out the way it does. \u00a0 I don’t know which came first in this case, lyrics or music, or that little happy riff, but Pumped Up Kicks definitely came together in a successful way.<\/p>\n
IJ<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I can always tell when a song has caught the imagination of a lot of people because I start to hear about it from my guitar students. \u00a0It doesn’t even have to be a guitar song per se, but as soon as my students begin referring to it, especially if the students are of different […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion","category-review"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/prwoq-f6","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/936\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}