Posted on 02/25/2012 1:24:50 AM PST by Yaelle
So my oldest likes to expose me to his playlists in the car, and sometimes this prompts a nice discussion. He played this song for me and I'd never heard it before, and now for days it is on my mind. It disturbs me more than your shoot-up-a-cop rap song.
I'm listening for the first time and can't really understand. It's a sweet, happy, bouncy chorus. Then I understand "all the other kids... Better run faster than my bullets". "outrun my gun.". I ask my son, is this what it sounds like? Is it PRO shooting up your school??
My son tells me what the writer of the song claims, that it's anti-school violence, that it is written from the point of view of an abused boy who has snapped, but I can't believe it. There are a few clues that make that story a lie.
The title is so sweet and cute, the kids with the fancy shoes: the pumped up kicks. And that does point to a jealous poor abused boy driven over the edge by what they all have and he doesn't. But that's not enough. I read that this guy has made money making jingles for commercials. This makes sense. "Pumped Up Kicks" has an earwormy tune for certain. But if this is truly from then point of view of an abused child who couldn't take any more, why isn't the tone bleak or angry? Why doesn't the song end with the kid getting his just desserts: killed by a cop, or caught and put in jail?
The chorus is sung with relaxed, joyful abandon. That would not be a mood of a kid blasting away at his school chums. It's a device to juxtapose sick, senseless murder with a cheerful jingle that could sell bubblegum. And that juxtaposition is thus meant to be edgy, and edgy means "cool" for either attention or "art.". This jingle writing man INTENDED the cognitive dissonance of joy and murder.
There is even one chorus that is whistled so happily it makes the seven dwarfs' commute sound morose.
This guy has written a pro-murder song and aimed it directly at unhappy high school students. Rather than being edgy or cool, I believe this song is nearly an encouragement to mass murder. I have re-listened to it a number of times and I feel it is morally irresponsible to deliberately mix a happy tune like this with such a violent theme.
My son says there are lots of pop songs like this, and he mentioned "I hate mondays" as one of them, which I also did not know was about mass murder.
Interested to know if this song bothered others. I hate to bring it back to the presidential race, but while I am all for freedom of lyrics, I do think that songs like this should be openly discussed for what they are, not banned. The election has us all talking about culture rot and that's a good thing. Kids need to know that this song is just a cheap device and that this guy is using his freedom to cry fire in a crowded theater.
Unfortunately, where there is free speech, there will also be foolish speech.
If he meant to provoke thought anNd discussion about HIM, AND HIS MOTIVATIONS AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY, He is successful. His juxtaposition of a pleasurable melody IS the subject, not the causes or horrors of teen mass shootings.
I think you are correct.
This may be santorum’s appeal too. He is the little boy telling us the culture emperor is empty, naked.
The mainstream mocks him for not being cool like they are, not being down with gay sex, illegal drugs, porn and guiltless living. But he isn’t trying to point out the culture is sinning. He’s trying to tell them they are standing for EMPTINESS.
When anything goes, there is no culture. Our lives become as meaningful as lives of rats. Our art becomes as meaningful as what a rat drags back into its hole from the dumpster.
Wow. It’s kinda sick. And if they are big Dem donors, buying their music is like being members of a politically connected union. I guess we now know how much of our entertainment dollars go to bad ends though.
You sound like you’re in the industry so this will come as no surprise to you but I know a musician who bought a chateau in France and a villa in Tuscany all from writing the jingles for a known toy’s tv commercials.
For those of you who watch the television series “Homeland” there was an interesting point where the song “Pumped Up Kicks” intersected the action.
In the final episode of Season One (ran in December) Sergeant Brody (a Manchurian candidate type) had donned a suicide vest under his marine uniform and was leaving his house to go on a suicide mission to blow up the Vice President and other high ranking US officials.
As he was leaving, Brody stopped in his kitchen to say goodbye to his teenage daughter who was there listening to her ipod (or maybe it was an iphone). As she removed her ear buds, you could hear that the music she was listening to at that moment was “Pumped Up Kicks”.
The daughter, who knew that her father had been acting strangely, was worried about him and asked him to not go. But he did go and played his part in the terrorist mission. I’m sure that the choice of the music was deliberate by the writers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_One_%28Homeland%29
Nope. Just a hobbyist. You’d be surprised what you can find hanging out on musician’s forums though. People in the industry aren’t secretive about it at all. It gets talked about alot by people trying to get in to the business and those offering their advice. It’s just that ‘normal’ people never tread those waters, or really ever think about what goes on to make the things entertainment in this case) that they consume.
It is kind of ridiculous to think that Don Imus gets fired for his words and the ESPN fellow for “chink in the armor” ... and yet there is an entire industry built on shocking, distasteful, hateful speech and they are richly rewarded for it.
Well, I found a GREAT "recruiting" video here Adele-Rolling In The Deep(Hot Ibiza Party Remix 2012) . I don't think it's "work safe", either - lol!
That would be the ‘not so good’ ;)
Try Chicane - “Offshore”. That’s a bit more old school and better ;)
Seconded!
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