10 Dark Backstories To Otherwise Cheery Songs

4. Foster The People - Pumped Up Kicks

220px Pumpedupkicks

Released: September 14 2010 The most recent in this list comes from indie American band "Foster The People" The song was the band's debut and was well received, finding itself a large amount of radio airtime around it's release, due to it's psychedelic pop sound which proved inoffensive in itself. Musically it is a bass guitar and drum driven track with keyboards, whistling and handclaps thrown in at certain points. This led listeners to believe that what they were hearing was just the usual American indie pop, unaware that in the mildly distorted vocals was a far darker meaning. The vocals of the song juxtapose the previously mentioned musical style, with the song in fact being the description of a mentally unstable youth as he plans to shoot up his high school. This is made evident in the songs chorus in which the youth issues a warning to his potential victims that "You better run, better run, better outrun my gun" and also "You better run, better run, faster than my bullet". Ironically this is one of the few sections in which Mark Foster's vocals are clearest, yet lyrically the most notable for exploiting the songs theme of anti gun violence. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDTZ7iX4vTQ
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17 year old from Scotland hoping to study journalism at university this year.