Pop rock for the masses. Unless you have been living under a rock or refuse to listen to normal radio or watch TV or otherwise exist in a regular, public arena with the rest of us, you have heard Pumped Up Kicks before. Likely more than a million times before:
This video has been seen over 137 million freaking times. I mean, damn. Plus 73 million spins on Spotify. It was a number one single, received a Grammy nomination, and generally took over the world in 2011. And despite the sunny little tune and happy sounding chorus, the whole thing is about a psychotic kid who is telling other kids that they'd better run when he starts shooting them. You would also probably recognize "Helena Beat," "Don't Stop," "I Would Do Anything For You," and "Houdini" from their first album. This video, for Houdini (from their first album) was up for a Grammy but did not win:
That original album (2011's Torches) ended up selling a ton because of Pumped Up Kicks, and some of those other songs were pretty popular in their own right, especially Don't Stop. I've already linked you to one version of their big song off of their new album (Supermodel), because the ACL Fest artist called Young & Sick did the cover art for Supermodel and made a time-lapse video of recreating that art as a huge mural. Here is the regular video for that song, which is a pretty catchy ditty:
My preconceived thought is that I dislike these guys. Pumped Up Kicks got (and still gets) so much airplay that I'm annoyed by it. This seems like pop factory music made to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Without giving them a shot, I've got loads of that hipster-held-hatred garbage for something inauthentic. But if I toss all of that out the window and just enjoy Coming of Age, its a damn fun jam.
And I think Mark Foster is a great success story. He moved to L.A. to pursue music and was going nowhere, working day jobs and just trying to get noticed, scuffled around for a few years and came up with Pumped Up Kicks. I think that is cool.
Their new album (2014's Supermodel) is pretty good from front to back. Just enjoyable dance rock, It should set off some fun, even if it won't inspire the next Springsteen.
As an aside, I had a weird moment, where I thought Spotify had messed up and started playing A$AP Rocky, because Foster the People's new track A Beginner's Guide to Destroying the Moon actually samples A$AP Rocky's LVL, which is an odd juxtaposition.
Just listen to the first 15 seconds or so, then listen to this:
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