When a Song’s a Classic, It Can Ride the Line of Kitsch
July 5, 2021 4:20 PM   Subscribe

 
I really, really liked that Gotye's reaction to the gabillion Youtube covers was to take clips of them all and put them into a supercut out of gratitude.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:27 PM on July 5, 2021 [23 favorites]


Does the hook sound amazingly like “Baa Baa Black Sheep” to anybody else?
posted by chappell, ambrose at 4:44 PM on July 5, 2021 [4 favorites]


another take
https://www.abc.net.au/doublej/music-reads/features/gotye-kimbra-somebody-that-i-used-to-know-interview/13431956

most of the quotes are from an interview in 2018

My children have seen Gotye at various performances and all agreed that he and his band(s) are uniformly excellent.
posted by Barbara Spitzer at 5:06 PM on July 5, 2021 [3 favorites]


hook sound amazingly like “Baa Baa Black Sheep” to anybody else?

It does! But i think it also literally is, according to a Sound On Sound article about the making of it.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 5:16 PM on July 5, 2021 [1 favorite]


10 YEARS?!

jfc can I stop ageing now
posted by Kitteh at 5:24 PM on July 5, 2021 [44 favorites]


Oh, and I remember someone in a thread years and years ago (10, probably) saying something like "it's a great song but the amazing thing is it's not even the 2nd best song on the album" which turned out to be very true after a lot of listens to Making Mirrors - it's a fantastic album, well worth checking out.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 5:28 PM on July 5, 2021 [14 favorites]


I was sad that Kimbra didn't go on to something bigger than she did. She was the coolest part of the song for me.
posted by Bee'sWing at 5:28 PM on July 5, 2021 [4 favorites]


Walk off the Earth's cover was great

but the Key of Awesome's parody of that is the best
posted by mbo at 5:32 PM on July 5, 2021 [13 favorites]


I was sad that Kimbra didn't go on to something bigger than she did. She was the coolest part of the song for me.

I picked up Kimbra's debut album Vows based primarily on her part in "Somebody". It was fantastic, quickly became one of my favourite albums. "Settle Down" is an incredible song.
posted by a car full of lions at 5:44 PM on July 5, 2021 [12 favorites]


It came out when I was travelling the world (remember open[ish] borders?) and it was really cool as an Australian that wherever I went - Russia, the UK, East Africa, Canada, the US it was bound to come on the radio at some point.
posted by Silentgoldfish at 5:58 PM on July 5, 2021 [1 favorite]


Does the hook sound amazingly like “Baa Baa Black Sheep” to anybody else?

WELL IT DOES NOW
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 5:58 PM on July 5, 2021 [29 favorites]


I remember seeing the (real) performance of this on Saturday Night Live. I had not heard the song before and was expecting some run of the mill pop with autotune or some EDM, and when DeBecker started singing I was surprised that the guy could actually sing. Then Kimbra walked out and I was blown away.

I think this song really filled a void at the time... I was not very inspired by any music going around. I knew a lot of people who were passionate about EDM but I just couldn't get into it. My faith in humanity was restored by the popularity of this song.
posted by maggiemaggie at 6:16 PM on July 5, 2021 [3 favorites]


My favorite parody
posted by maggiemaggie at 6:23 PM on July 5, 2021 [8 favorites]


DE BACKER: People would be walking up to me on the street screaming “You didn’t have to cut me off!” in my face.

This is definitely a peril of being a pop star in Australia. This might be the most Oz thing I have ever heard.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 6:31 PM on July 5, 2021 [8 favorites]


The best Kimbra song is Good Intent, thank you.
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 6:33 PM on July 5, 2021 [4 favorites]


10 YEARS?! jfc can I stop ageing now

You think you've got problems? My username predates the song.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 6:44 PM on July 5, 2021 [110 favorites]


You think you've got problems? My username predates the song.

I'll bite. Elliott Smith?
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 6:45 PM on July 5, 2021 [4 favorites]


This song caught me at just the right time; a year and change prior, I'd been dumped by the guy who was pretty much the love of my life. We tried staying friends, but then he started doing a slow fade on me and by the time this song came around he wasn't speaking to me any more. So lyrics like "Now and then I think of when we were together/Like when you said you felt so happy you could die" hit hard, and I spent a good part of that summer stomping around my apartment and bellowing "But you didn't have to cuuuuuuuuut me ooooooooooff,/Make out like it never happened and that we were nothin'....."

...It's so weird, isn't it? The fact that you can be so intimately enmeshed with someone, and then just a couple years later you and they are off on whole different trajectories and you aren't even talking any more?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:48 PM on July 5, 2021 [17 favorites]


The only thing about Gotye that I knew years ago was that he was nerdy about vintage spinet organs.
posted by ovvl at 6:58 PM on July 5, 2021 [2 favorites]


You think you've got problems? My username predates the song.
- posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow


Ray Price!
posted by NoMich at 7:03 PM on July 5, 2021 [1 favorite]


haha

I am an entertainer. (Some artists disdain that moniker.) I play piano.

I do a lot of jazz standards which people know. Who doesn't Wish Upon a Star or thrill on a Paper Moon?

But playing songs everybody knows has become difficult in the last two decades. Niche Streaming Listening is the thing, given the option of of buying CDs, Vinyl (the last minute savior of many record stores which were vinyl, then CD, then on the verge of obsolescence). My audience usually knows oldies, so I riff on those a lot.

That said, I learned this song when it came out, because everybody knew it, and it was an easy song to learn. It landed in the discard pile of my repertoire some time ago, of course. Playing tunes by Prince or Beck sometimes worked.

Lately, my last-minute tunes have been resurrected by the appearance of Billie Eilish. Everybody knows her songs, and she has quite a gift for melody.

Anyway, I don't think I'll be going back to that song, as earwormish as it used to be.
posted by kozad at 7:04 PM on July 5, 2021 [9 favorites]


How has nobody mentioned this parody yet?
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 7:12 PM on July 5, 2021 [4 favorites]


This reminds me of the fun reference in an AskMe answer in 2008: “my good friend is a musician called ‘Gotye’.
posted by AgentRocket at 7:15 PM on July 5, 2021 [19 favorites]


*snicker* I am now also suddenly remembering that there was one take Gotye didn't like - he said that the cover of the song they did on "Glee" was "dinky and wrong".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:19 PM on July 5, 2021 [2 favorites]


The lyrics to that song are so great. They tell such a story, and Kimbra’s verse puts it right over the top. I haven’t thought about that song in ages. Thanks for posting.
posted by ThatCanadianGirl at 7:32 PM on July 5, 2021 [1 favorite]


This is the first time hearing that song for me, or anything about this band. Good stuff.
posted by Oyéah at 8:12 PM on July 5, 2021 [2 favorites]


A friend introduced it to me on a psychedelic trip. I was quite moved by the music and the video. It was hard to shake that melancholy, and he felt bad for putting me in a bit a of spin. But then I'm the asshole who's tried to introduce folks to The Mountain Goats while none of us were sober, so there's that. It's a haunting song. And, friends let friends discover The Mountain Goats on their own. Maybe this song too
posted by treepour at 8:51 PM on July 5, 2021 [2 favorites]


This song is still good. At the time I remember we were all really impressed that it was a breakup song where both parties had an equal voice.
posted by subdee at 9:17 PM on July 5, 2021 [3 favorites]


It's so weird, isn't it? The fact that you can be so intimately enmeshed with someone, and then just a couple years later you and they are off on whole different trajectories and you aren't even talking any more?

I feel the same. I don't get how it happens or continues to happen. Whatever you think of the song, that feeling just fucking sucks about someone you cared about and can never again be like that with.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:24 PM on July 5, 2021 [6 favorites]


take clips of them all and put them into a supercut

missed one
posted by flabdablet at 12:05 AM on July 6, 2021 [1 favorite]


Does the hook sound amazingly like “Baa Baa Black Sheep” to anybody else?

I keep imagining some Australian kindergarten singsong about bunyips and billabongs or something.
posted by acb at 1:10 AM on July 6, 2021 [1 favorite]


"Settle Down" is an incredible song.

I love this live version of Kimbra singing it by laying down a bunch of loops.
posted by straight at 2:45 AM on July 6, 2021 [4 favorites]


I must say that I never found the parodies all that compelling. The song is slow, lacks a strong rhythmic identity that would make it identifiable when other lyrics scanned to it, and just kind of drones.

That isn't to say it's a bad song (though it really never appealed to me), but it's just sort of a blank canvas that most any sentences could be laid upon.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 4:04 AM on July 6, 2021 [2 favorites]


Does the hook sound amazingly like “Baa Baa Black Sheep” to anybody else?
And of course, Ba Ba Blacksheep * was a blatant rip off of "Ah! vous dirai-je, maman" (audio) - and that song was a parody of an older song "La Confidence naïve" - Niave Confidence: which is kind of on the same subject as "Somebody I used to know".
(* And lawyers representing "Twinkle, twinkle little star" and "The Alphabet song" will no doubt be calling)
posted by rongorongo at 5:04 AM on July 6, 2021 [1 favorite]


There are tons of songs like this that I like when I first hear them, but soon become background noise.

Not this one. Nine years ago I was in Morocco and got into a complicated situation. It involved chain smoking evil nurses, an orphanage with a very dark side, ultra-rich European socialites, a guarded compound with giant tortoises roaming free, and at the end a minor diplomatic incident. Two others and me found a broker that took cash and put us on a plane to Paris. Past immigration at CDG I booked the first available hotel, got to my room, set the AC to freezing, turned on the TV at full volume and took a very long very hot shower.

As I was trying to relax, the hot water not quite washing away the adrenaline and stress hormones from the last few days, the video came on the TV. I could see the TV from the glass walled shower and I was hypnotized. When the video ended I was feeling safe again, no longer shaking and jumping at shadows, ready to go out and have my first Parisian pastry and coffee.

Now every time I unexpectedly hear the song I feel safe for a minute. Kind of like a personal nursery rhyme.
posted by Dr. Curare at 9:04 AM on July 6, 2021 [12 favorites]


I wasn't listening to the radio much in 2011, but somehow I heard this song a lot. Which was fitting—right around then I'd been on the receiving end of a break-up with a woman I wanted to marry. Some of the lines didn't really fit my situation, but the sense of hurt came across loud and clear, so I listened to it repeatedly for months after.

I'd agree with other comments that Kimbra's contribution really takes the song to another level, for me anyway.
posted by xenization at 9:54 AM on July 6, 2021 [2 favorites]


I remember hearing this song the first time and liking it, then hearing it again. And again. And again. And living in LA at the time I'd change the station. But the other station always had that one Florence and the Machine song. So you'd go to the 3rd station that was ostensibly a rock station and it'd be playing that Fun! song. So you'd be the least sick of that one at the time and then *that* station would start playing this song. So you'd change stations and the other one would now be playing that Fun! song, so going back to the first station you'd hear that Florence and the Machine song again. And then finally Pumped Up Kicks or Cough Syrup would play and you'd just turn off the radio.

It's a good song and I'm happy he had the hit, but it was definitely the last time I ever listened to any radio stations in any real sense. They just played those 3 songs into the ground at the time, and in my imagination those songs are still just on an endless loop to this day.
posted by mikesch at 11:16 AM on July 6, 2021 [2 favorites]


It's a good song and I'm happy he had the hit, but it was definitely the last time I ever listened to any radio stations in any real sense. They just played those 3 songs into the ground at the time, and in my imagination those songs are still just on an endless loop to this day.

*Snicker* Different song, but same syndrome: back in 1999, when Santana and Rob Thomas were dominating the airwaves with the song "Smooth", MTV held a peoples'-choice awards show, and during the months leading up to it also announced that viewers would have a chance to create their own brand new award category, for which a winner would also be selected by the public. The new award thus created was called the "Your Song Kicks Ass But Got Played Too Damn Much" award, and in 1999 it was indeed awarded to "Smooth". I would wager that the 2011 winner would be this.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:46 AM on July 6, 2021 [2 favorites]


My favorite local Gotye story is that when he was touring in San Francisco in 2012 he and his mates kicked everyone's ass at a pub quiz at Tendernob bar Minx. People involved said he was a really nice guy.
posted by oneirodynia at 12:06 PM on July 6, 2021 [1 favorite]


...and, of course, a precious we used to know
posted by Clowder of bats at 3:27 PM on July 6, 2021 [1 favorite]


I feel like the last couple of decades have been such a dull, blighted time for pop music. I don't consider myself a music snob, my tastes are pretty eclectic, but most of the big modern hits bore or appall me and I have to really hunt to find anything I like. This was one of those songs where it was like, "Wait. I like this? It's got some humanity and art to it? And... it's on mainstream radio? How did this get through?" I didn't even mind that it was played so goddamned much, because it was such a rare thrill to hear a hit song that I actually liked.

This is the first time hearing that song for me, or anything about this band. Good stuff.

Be sure to drink lots of water and get some protein as you recover from the long period you seem to have spent in cryosleep.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 4:25 PM on July 6, 2021 [2 favorites]


New parody, it seems to be from just last year - a "bardcore" cover by "Hildegarde von Blingin'" doing it in a Medieval ballad style.

....It....it works.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:37 PM on July 6, 2021 [4 favorites]


Agreed, that Bardcore parody works beautifully. And now for something completely different and totally today: Some Hobby That I Used to Know
posted by valetta at 7:52 PM on July 6, 2021 [1 favorite]


Another nice thing about Wally de Backer is that he's contributed to the Melbourne Electronic Sound Studio, one of Melbourne's little known musical gems. I believe he has contributed gear to the collection.
posted by awfurby at 9:58 PM on July 6, 2021 [2 favorites]


A stoic Ophelia confronts a manic Hamlet (who seems to be more into Yorick's skull than her) with the song.
posted by humbug at 5:01 AM on July 7, 2021 [2 favorites]


I was mystified by the popularity of this song at the time. It never really clicked with me I guess.

I agree that Kimbra is great though, her first album at least.
posted by mokey at 5:34 AM on July 7, 2021 [2 favorites]


This song is still good. At the time I remember we were all really impressed that it was a breakup song where both parties had an equal voice.
posted by subdee


Song recco for you: Stars — Your Ex-Lover is Dead
posted by saturday_morning at 2:26 PM on July 8, 2021 [3 favorites]


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