If you have ears, you're well aware of the song Somebody That I Used to Know by the artist Gotye. (On the off chance you haven't yet heard it, just turn on the nearest radio; it's probably playing. Or you can listen to this great cover by Ingrid Michaelson here.)
I've been fascinated by this song for weeks. From the first moment it came across my minivan's sound system, it was clear that this artist captured some great truth about the human experience in his music. I couldn't download it to my iPod fast enough, and I listened to it about a dozen times the first day I bought it. Evidently I wasn't the only one. Take a look at these stats, from the Wikipedia entry about the song. After tearing through the charts in Australia and New Zealand:
In the United States, it debuted at number 91 on the Billboard Hot 100 on 14 January 2012...[it] has received nine Platinum certifications in Australia, accounting for shipments exceeding 630,000 units. In New Zealand, it was certified four times Platinum. In the United Kingdom, it has sold over one million copies and is the best-selling single of the year so far. As of April 2012, it is the most downloaded song ever in Belgium, as well as being the third best-selling digital single in Germany with sales between 500,000 and 600,000 copies, and the most successful song in the history of the Dutch charts.
In the United States, the song has the fourth highest-selling single week ever with 542,000 digital downloads sold. On 2 May 2012 the song became the first to reach digital sales of at least 400,000 for three consecutive weeks, and the following week it became the first to simultaneously top the Alternative Songs, Hot Dance Club Songs and Dance Mix Show Airplay charts. It is also the longest-reigning number-one song on the Alternative Songs chart. As of June 2012, "Somebody That I Used to Know" has sold more than 5 million copies in the United States and 7 million copies worldwide, making it the biggest selling single of 2012 and one of the best-selling digital singles of all time, reaching No. 1 in more than 23 national charts and charting inside the top ten in more than 30 countries around the world.
In many ways, it's an unlikely candidate for a hit. It doesn't feature Justin Bieber, a famous rap artist wasn't the producer, and there's nary a guitar solo in the whole thing. The main musical instrument is a xylophone, for goodness' sake! And yet, as the sales prove, people cannot get enough of this song. Clearly, Gotye has tapped into something that resonates deeply in the modern psyche. As I continue to find myself entranced by the tune, and see its popularity growing each day, I keep wondering:
What is it that makes this song so hypnotic? What is it about the human experience that Gotye has tapped into that makes this song so addictive?
I'd been concocting various theories over the past few weeks during my laundry-folding and dish-washing philosophizing sessions, but my answer didn't gel until a recent trip to Ikea. I saw a woman across the aisle who looked like a girl I once knew in high school. I moved closer to see if it was her, and realized that I just didn't remember her face well enough to know. She walked off before I had a chance to ask if her name was Sarah (which likely saved us both from a really awkward moment), and as she walked away, I felt the pang of a certain kind of loss.
The friendship that Sarah and I had did not span a very long time. We got to know one another during our junior year, and we lost touch after graduation. This was 1995, the pre-Facebook era, when few people had cell phones or email, and thus these kinds of things happened fairly frequently: You'd lose touch with friends, even good friends, simply because the hassles of keeping in touch got in the way. But the short time Sarah and I had together was intense, and we shared experiences that I doubt either of us will ever forget. Her family was going through a crisis in those years, and I recall many moments sitting on her canopy bed with her, hugging, crying, and telling her it would be okay. I always felt like there was something special about those times, and knew it had a source beyond just typical teenage drama.
I couldn't have articulated it at the time, but what I sensed was communion. We humans are made for communion, for intimacy, for connection with God and others -- and when we experience it, we know we've had a brush with the eternal. Even though I was an atheist in those years, I never would have denied that something special -- sacred, even -- transpired between us in those moments, however brief they were. I knew that the bond we felt in those moments was meant to last, that in a perfect world, it would remain forever. One afternoon when we were sitting outside during lunch at school, we were having such a great time, just chatting and laughing, that I was overwhelmed with a yearning for our friendship to last forever -- I knew that that's the way it should be. But I was enough of a realist to know that not all high school friendships last, and it broke my heart to accept the fact that there was a real chance that we would lose touch one day; that, to her, I would be somebody whom she used to know.
And so as I watched the woman walk away at Ikea the other day, I could hear Somebody That I Used to Know in my head like a movie soundtrack. Though Gotye is specifically singing about a failed romance (and Bonnie Engstrom covers that angle here), the kind of loss that drives his musical masterpiece can happen in every kind of human relationship. Other songs may do a better job of conveying the pain of rage, or sorrow, or disappointment; but through both the words and the melody of his haunting tune, Gotye nails a particular kind of pain, one that is tragically common in modern life: The pain of lost communion.
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Nice.
I always seem to find uplifting music under the wrong titles. I love the song: True Love’s First Kiss” (Composed by Harry Gregson-Williams and John Powell)—ya know, from Shrek. When I first heard it, I didnt know that it was from that movie (it seems to be wasted there if you ask me).
It struck me in a strange way—seemed to be the nearest thing on this earth to capturing the Joy of Jesus’ Resurrection, if you think about Our Lord when listening to it—as if flying in spirit over the earth. My now teen age kids still tease me to this day about it now that they are older—“You still listen to that Shriek song”, they’ll say.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzStDHlZDyM
And, then, of course, there is the theme from the Last of the Mohicans.
These 2 songs in my opinion are 2 of the most powerful lyrics when shared in Memory of Our Lord—they raise my spirits if ever I feel a little down. Enjoy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuLiKz39ZOM
Well, I guess I live in a cave. I had never heard that song before and I do have ears.
Catholic: Last of the Mohicans- one of my all-time favorite movies. I still have the DVD and soundtrack to play in my car. CD not MP3 player- I am so old school, I guess. <smile>
you have to check out this cover http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOKuAigsrec by Pentatonix. No instruments, just beat-boxing.
Personally, I find “Somebody That I Used To Know” has a great pulse and rhythm in it. Gotta love the xylophone, too ;)
Well, I too must be livin’ in a cave or it could be that our state is having one of its worst fire seasons and my attention has been drawn in that area. The song is a bit haunting and depressing, but again it could be the mood here:) I do like the simplicity of the music and her voice too. Oh, the instument is not a xylophone, it is a set of concert bells, muted with tape, which gives the somewhat “xylophone” sound.
Joanp62:
Maybe if you got your knuckles off the ground and came out of your cave, you might learn something about history, instead of making lame excuses for the church.
Very insightful. This song was my guilty pleasure all spring and I’m glad to know I’m not the only Catholic mom cruising around contemplating its lyrics (though you analysis is far better than anything I came up with) :)
Ummmm, Christine, what are you talking about? And you’re still at it? You haven’t learned even from your own fellow atheists, that you aren’t going to get anywhere with anyone with your arrogant idiocy.
Poor Christine - she needs lots of prayers! Maybe we can help her to come out of her cave of darkness.
Jennifer,
You connect us through this song with the common pain of the loss of human communion. You share your own experience and we recognize our own losses. The friend you used to know with whom you’ve lost touch is for us: the love rejected that we now wish (impossible) we could restore; the cherished one now separated through death; the father or mother or both that we never had or from whom we suffered such wrong. How can we not see that all these point us to the Infinite Love offered to us now by Jesus Christ? When people ask why we need Jesus to save us, from what do we need to be saved, how can we not see that if we have not He Who Is the Fulfillment of All Desire we have already begun living the loss of Communion from which all other communions flow? If we finally reject this Infinite Love and have no chance to get it back, instead of the pain of finite human loss, how can we not see that we suffer the pain of losing the Infinite Communion for which we were created in the beginning? At present, it is not fully worked out, but if we continue moving away from Him we choose this most painful, most eternal loss of this Most True Communion. What is Hell except the unalterable loss of communion with God? This is the urgency with which we pray for our own final salvation and the salvation of others.
Dont forget the rxcellent cover of this song by Walk off the Earth. Se it here…http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9NF2edxy-M
And after you catch Walk off the Earth’s cover, you need to see this parody:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQTisKNnV7U&feature=related
I was laughing so hard I’m in tears.
I love this song. It reminds me of a young man I once dated. I broke up with him and I didn’t do it in a nice way. I feel bad about it but that was over 38 years ago and I’m sure he got over it way back then but I still feel a pang of guilt when I think of him. I should have been kinder to him.
Now I am obsessed with the song after your 7 quick takes!
ok, sorry, just noticed you already put a link to the pentatonix cover on your blog!
Im a bit late in reading this blog, but after doing so watched the video on you tube. What I found that deeply resonated with me is that he doesn’t get it. The video seems to allude to the fact that we all paint our stories in the perfect lines, but refuse to see that other people dont always fit where we’d like them to. She answers his heart ache, she steps out of the lines and is ‘naked and vulnerable’ because she missed the relationship as well, but her honest words fall on deaf ears. His lines are drawn. He doesn’t want to hear what she has to say because he is addicted to his sadness.
I love that song but it is truly about tragedy. The reason it resonates so much is that we’ve all been on one end or the other of rejection and even though you miss that love and friendship, it just isn’t there anymore. So often in relationships people give up and want to throw the whole thing away. My approach is a bit more radical as I thought about it through a book I read when I was 17 that said something like “So he did something unforgivable, no question. But we all do unforgivable things. We do them over and over again, and God still forgives us.” It really made me look inward and realize that I expect other people to be perfect in relationships when I myself am so far from perfect. It’s not very fair. I can’t speak for those in dysfunctional relationships but even normal people can have some pretty big messes and I think it takes a lot of strength to pull through them and keep a relationship intact. But in our society well I just don’t think people try hard enough in general. We want the other person to be perfect so we try to convince ourselves that they are until that fantasy breaks apart and then, well that’s the end. I don’t think it should necessarily be the end.
I’m glad to know I’m not the only one living in a cave… I remember sometime back flipping through a People magazine at the line in the grocery store. I read a line that said “Unless you’re on another planet or living under a rock, you’ve heard of the movie Twilight…” Well, it was then that I learned that I must live under a rock, and now I know that I live under a rock IN a cave!! Oh well… Great song though! Very nice rhythms, but the words do make you ache a little bit.
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