Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Pumped Up Kicks: What is your interpretation?

This song plays on the station at work all. the. time.  It's kind of catchy and I never knew what it was about until Joe, the jewelry display god, brought it up to me.  A customer was walking through, singing it very off-tune and Joe asked me later, "You do know what that song is about, don't you?"

"Why, no I don't." 

He went on to tell me that it was about a kid who went to school and shot up his peers.  Yikes. 

Several of us at work have discussed it.  My basic thought is that if you can take a fairly liberal minded bunch of artists and college students and offend them with a song, somethings got to be a little off. 

I looked up some lyric interpretatons online. 

What are your thoughts?  Me?  I have a love for alternative music.  This one makes me shake my head, though.

Smiles in my day:
-  Finally, K- has a very "wiggly tooth." 

Have a great day!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I really loved that song until my highschooler needed to do an assignment on song lyrics and picked that song. I was hearing the lyrics wrong (thought it said run faster than my brother). Anyway, I find it disturbing that the melody of that song does not match the lyrics AT ALL.

Bailey's Leaf said...

Wow. I agree with you completely. I had no idea. All I could say to my coworker was, "I'm sure Columbine doesn't appreciate this."

To the defense of the band, they are an Indie band and I don't expect that they thought that this would be picked up and quite as popular as it is. As an artist, I get artistic freedom and whatnot. This one pushed it a bit more than I could go. Still, when the coworkers were saying that they heard that this was "the song of the summer," it made me scratch my head and go, "Really?"

Rach said...

Wow, what a fun, funky tune and what really really messed up lyrics. I'm a girl who enjoys good alternative music, but this is just...wow.

I completely agree with everything you wrote in your post and your comment.

I wonder if folks didn't just get caught up in the catchiness of it and not pay attention to the lyrics. I know Lily Allen's "Alright, Still" is quite catchy, but if you listen to the words it's something else entirely.

ChupieandJ'smama (Janeen) said...

Maybe I'm just old, but it bother's me too. I had no idea what the real meaning was either :(

Anonymous said...

I know I'm late to the party, but I had to comment. I ALWAYS mishear lyrics. In this case I thought he was singing "all the kids with the pumped up kisses...better run better run faster than I'm coming..." Here I thought it was about a kissing bandit. Never was able to make out the rest of the lyrics, though. Sure changes everything.
--AK