Pop music usually gets called "mindless" and "empty," but some pop tunes actually demonstrate surprising nuance. Gotye's smash hit "Somebody That I Used to Know" shows that pop songs don't need to be vacant and can, in fact, have many layers if they are thoughtfully written and performed.
Gotye starts the song in a soft tone that suggests a deep sadness. This lightly hints to the listener that the breakup he alludes to has beaten him down. His softer tone also makes his words more conversational; he is talking to us rather than singing to us. Gotye is telling a story, one that many listeners will have lived through themselves.
When Gotye finally gets to the chorus, it hits the listener's ears like a scream. All the anger that was bottled up during the first verse finally explodes onto the track. Gotye is pained because he thinks his ex doesn't care about him at all anymore, and he feels that he has been reduced to nothing. It's a relatable pain: people never want to feel insignificant or forgotten. This agony justifies why Gotye is so hurt by his ex's coldness.
Because Gotye believes that his ex has made their relationship meaningless, he returns the favor. His ex remains nameless and featureless throughout the song and is only "somebody that [he] used to know." It's a bitter statement, but it's easy to see that it stems from his pain, rather than from malice.
As a character in Jean Renoir's film "Rules of the Game" (1939) says, "The awful thing about life is this: Everyone has his reasons." Gotye's ex was the "villain" because it was Gotye's perspective that we heard the song from up until this point. In reality, things are never that simple.
Kimbra's verse is short but incredibly dense. She starts off by singing, "Now and then," which is exactly how Gotye started his first verse. This mirroring positions both members of the couple similarly, and the audience realizes that they're both coming from the same place.
Kimbra's voice starts off high and fragile, which clues the listener into how upset she is about the breakup. In her weakened voice, she talks about how she blamed herself for what happened at first. It's a very human quality to think a problem was your own fault, and this quickly earns the listeners' sympathy. As she starts to blame herself less and less, her voice becomes stronger until she sounds completely unafraid to confront her ex. It's hard not to side with her, as in only about four lines she displays understandable vulnerability and gains confidence.
The cherry on top is her verse's ending. She spitefully throws her ex's words back at him with barely restrained anger, as she mockingly cries, "You said that you could let it go/And I wouldn't catch you hung up on somebody that you used to know."
Her verse drops into the chorus again, but it feels different this time. For one, the chorus is directed at Kimbra now, which gives Gotye's singing a more desperate and personal feel. The chorus now also has the added screams and background singing from both Kimbra and Gotye, which causes it to resemble a sort of musical argument. This adds a great deal of depth to their contentious interplay.
This disunity between their vocals continues through the end of the song, when the singers end with a harmonious "used to know" before fading out. Though the two are clearly in conflict, the one final thing that they can agree on is that it's over. The song ends with them both acknowledging the end in a final bit of bitter poetry.
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Joe Stile is a political science major and English minor. He is a senior and can be reached at Joseph.Stile@tufts.edu.
