Making Mirrors
"You said that you would let it go and it wouldn't get you hung up on somebody that you used to know!"
Had
I not had a friendship go down the tubes earlier this year and beared
emotions similar to those emphasized in Gotye's breakout single
"Somebody That I Used to Know," I maybe wouldn't have included this song
in this list. Yet, even before that friendship (not relationship)
ended, I found "Somebody That I Used to Know" to be an incredible song,
unlike any other mainstream hit I ever heard.
I
didn't hear this song for the first time until the fall of 2013 (to
which another close friend said, "did you even listen to the radio in
2012?") on the monotonous "Blend" network on Sirius XM, which is
constantly on at work, playing the same, recycled hits from several
months back in a cycle. The station has about four great songs to
punctuate its additional fifty or sixty which range from mediocre to
downright awful. "Somebody That I Used to Know" is the silver-lining; an
incredible song that gets mood, emotion, and perspective down to a tee.
The
song begins by having a male voice (Belgian-Australian pop singer
Gotye) give his side of a recently corrupted relationship, talking about
how it was a miserable experience and so forth. What follows a
mesmerizing verse (combined with an addicting instrumentation) is a
chorus that leaps in pitch and one that makes me wish I wasn't tone-deaf
so I could sing it marginally well. Then we have a female voice (New
Zealand pop singer Kimbra) give her side of the relationship in a short
and sweet sentiment. The song is impossible to explain well, due to the
work appealing greatly to ones sense of sound and serving as a
beautiful, melodic sensation, but it's uniqueness stems from giving both
of its relationship parties a voice. Even most of the saddest love
songs that were written based on true events didn't have the benefit of
the other party (male or female) giving their take on what happened.
But
the song's chorus is what sticks with me the most, not just for its
sound, but for how closely it mirrors my feelings on the aforementioned
friendship that was tarnished. Some nights I think about how the song
"Somebody That I Used to Know" would play out if me and the other person
sung it and what we would say. This song struck a chord (no pun
intended) when I first heard it and now it strikes one more personal;
it's a subversive piece of work for a mainstream tune.
Give "Somebody That I Used to Know" a listen, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqRC5tquyU0
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