This Song: Pumped Up Kicks
Foster the People
This Song is a monthly feature of So Much Stuff, offering a snippet of association to who and where I was when it was a popular release or otherwise entered my radar.
Okay, yes—this song is about a homicidal teen. And I’ll come back to that. But in 2010, when Foster the People released their debut single “Pumped Up Kicks,” I was regularly driving through harrowing rush-hour traffic from my San Francisco apartment up near the Golden Gate Bridge to the Pottery Barn photo studios down in Brisbane. Then it turned out I could avoid half that traffic by taking a roundabout route through San Bruno Mountain State & County Park.
There were rarely other cars as I traversed the park surrounded by a landscape whose natural beauty underscored the well-crafted contrast between the upbeat music and the sinister lyrics. You can be sure I was singing and bopping along behind the wheel.
Last week, when this song popped into my head, I was trying to repair the braided chenille rug from my childhood bedroom, and was at odds as to how—or even if—I should write about it here. The whole homicidal teen thing kind of a buzz kill. (Treading a fine line with that quip, I know.)
Among other things, like envy and the pressures of economic disparity associated with the (Reebok) Pumps of the title, the lyrics reflect songwriter Mark Foster’s attempt to “get inside the head of an isolated, psychotic kid,” and to understand the internal and external factors pushing him toward a violent outcome.
In a 2017 interview with CNN, Foster notes the song being written from “a place of wanting us to do something about gun violence, wanting legislation to be passed that can limit our resources because it feels like these mass shootings are becoming common now.” Another seven years later, in 2024, we’ve seen how well that’s been going.
On the lighter side, I’m all for a song with whistling, love the single repeated word bridge, and hey, “Your hair’s on fire, you must have lost your wits, yeah.”
The cognitive dissonance is real, but I love this song. It kind of reminds me of a classic 60s folk-rock song by Phil Ochs, "Outside of a Small Circle of Friends," where all these disasters are recounted over a jaunty banjo-style chorus.