They're on a mostly sold-out tour right now, scheduled to hit Chicago's Riviera Theatre Wednesday night. And the tune has been top 10 on the Billboard Hot chart since Aug. It's a nice story, almost. Mark Foster, the group's Cleveland-bred frontman, did not respond to an e-mail request to address some of the questions raised by the song. But in interviews, when the song's dark subject matter has been an issue, he's seemed able to satisfy questioners by referencing Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood.
But acknowledging that the song is dark is about as far as most critics who have reviewed "Torches," Foster the People's debut album, have come to engaging with "Pumped Up Kicks. Foster is no Katy Perry, brazenly exploiting teen sexuality for the sake of "controversy.
There's just not enough information there. You might argue that the tune's cheeriness is a symbol of just how far off the deep end this kid has gone. This interview was conducted prior to Tuesday's terror attack in New York City. But not everyone immediately noticed the cautionary tale about gun violence that lead singer Mark Foster relates in the lyrics:.
More Videos Mark Foster reflects on "Pumped Up Kicks" Story highlights Mark Foster reflects on "Pumped Up Kicks" following the Vegas massacre The song is about a boy who fantasizes about shooting up his school.
Although its tone is jubilant and upbeat -- prompting some fans to blast it during celebratory times -- "Pumped Up Kicks" is about a boy named Robert, who fantasizes about shooting up his school. The deadliest shooting in modern American history took place on October 1 when a gunman opened fire at the Route 91 Harvest music festival in Las Vegas, leaving 58 dead and more than injured.
Read More. After the massacre, many Democratic and Republican lawmakers agreed to ban the sale of bump-fire stocks, but a month later, Congress does not appear to be taking steps to outlaw them. With emotions raw after Vegas, Foster said that he and his bandmates decided not to perform "Pumped Up Kicks" at the Austin City Limits festival in Texas or at the "All Things Go" music festival in Washington because some people misinterpret its meaning.
What more do you want? And like I said, the song, the symbol of the song changed -- the public made it what it was, and if the public wants to make it something different, that's okay. But that's my choice of how I want to react to that. Yeah, I've thought about it. But I don't know, I'm not a huge fan of sequels. If I can figure out a way to do it in a way that's authentic and feels fresh and not preachy, I'll do it. I've even thought about releasing that same exact song, with completely different lyrics.
Or continuing the story, and talking about where Robert went from there -- because nobody knows how that story ends. So people fill in the blanks, and I think sometimes horror is the most powerful when you let the imagination fill in what happens.
After Sandy Hook happened, some radio stations began to take the song off the air and MTV censored some of the lyrics. What was your reaction to that? I think in the beginning, when that first started happening, I felt like it was bulls--t and I felt like the song was being treated differently, because it sounded like West Coast sunshine pop. If you look at the content on television and the shows that are getting nominated for Emmys every year, and movies that are getting nominated for Oscars every year, the content that we desire tends to be pretty dark.
The stories that get rewarded are the ones that tend to be really dark and talking about the deepest, darkest parts of humanity that people don't want to discuss. That's the most interesting thing for people to read in a book, that's the most interesting thing for people to make a movie about.
But for whatever reason, songs are held in a different regard when it sounds like, "This is something that my three-year-old kid would really like.
This is safe. This doesn't have any bad words in it or cuss words. I think that nudity should be allowed on TV, but watching someone's head get blown off shouldn't. But you know, that's a much bigger subject to talk about. That's just how we are, and people want things to stay the same.
People aren't used to things changing and people aren't used to things creating a ripple in society, and when something does, people react to it and most of the time when something changes, your natural reaction is fear.
The United States, since the age of the Western, early cinema, we've been watching people get shot, we've been rooting for that character to gun somebody down in the OK Corral. And Clint Eastwood, you know, here he comes to save the day, he just murdered a bunch of Native Americans, the good guys win again.
That's something that we grew up on and so we're desensitized to it until it comes in a different form and then in that different form you see the horror of it because you didn't have your walls up from the years of propaganda that you've been fed to be numbed to receiving it in a certain way.
I'm curious if radio stations and MTV would have reacted the same way if the song wasn't as upbeat and the melody wasn't as high and it sounded more dark and ominous. It would've been fine, but nobody would've cared about the song. People cared about the song because of how it made them feel, and then it shocked them when they dived into it.
As much as I want to say that art forms should all be created equal, they're not. I think what that shows you is that people do hold music in a higher regard in some form -- that a three-minute song can make somebody more uncomfortable than a two-hour movie.
And I guess maybe it's the fluidity of it too -- like, when something is being played everywhere around the world for a month or two, you hear it everywhere, and you really don't have a choice. Over the past 10 years or so, there have been many times when a shooting would happen and we'd be in the middle of a tour, and we'd be playing that night, and it started to feel wrong to play that song.
Not because of where we were coming from, but being sensitive to the people in the audience that might misperceive it or might be triggered by it. Looking back on the song, is there anything about it that you would change today? Yeah, I would've taken some of the choruses out.
There's too many double choruses. That's the nature of putting a demo online. Usually, I would sit with a demo and listen to a song a hundred times and then when I go to record it for real, I would have a better idea of which parts feel kind of long and which parts make me lose interest or start to get annoying so I can tighten them up.
But because that was the demo, I didn't have time to do that and once it became reactive, it didn't make sense to put a different version out. It's like, "Well, why would I change it?
It's not broken. But that second chorus was something that always bothered me -- it's already a long chorus so it didn't need to repeat, and then the end, the outro, it's the chorus three or four times in a row. It's just overkill. We've been playing it different live for years. I think we changed that the first year when we're playing it live, we never play double choruses.
Is there anything else you'd like to share about how the song has held up over the decade? Obviously it's a very complicated thing for me, but even with all the blemishes, I'm proud of it. I'm proud that a three-minute song created so much conversation about something that's worth talking about, and I think that every artist dreams of making something that holds its value -- and that I really feel like I made the earth pause for a second and bend down to hear what I was saying.
And I'm proud of that. But I think it might be time to retire it.
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