This review covers the pop track Gotye – Somebody That I Used to Know.
This track was released in 2011 on the album Making Mirrors. While seemingly labelled as independent music, this is a release under a label whose parent label is Universal Music Group. So, it’s not independent music.
The track starts off really quiet. In fact, it’s so quiet, it’s hard to even understand the lyrics. It borders on mumbling. It’s not always this quiet as there are moments when the vocals turn up the volume to make it at least reasonably easy to hear.
There are female backup vocals in this track. While it does follow this pattern of borderline mumbling and normal singing, it isn’t quite as bad as the male vocals. They’re nothing special though.
The lyrics, from what I could gather, is simply discussing estrangement of someone. This is strange given that this track is backed by a wobbling guitar sound, subtle strumming, and a wood instrument. If the tracks lyrics were talking about smoking weed, I think it would make more sense, but it doesn’t seem to talk about that at all. So, it’s just a strange arrangement.
Overall, the mumbling means that I can’t understand half the track. There’s just no energy as a result of making everything so soft and hard to hear. I’m not sure if what little backing instruments that were audible really fit well with what the lyrics were talking about. Either way, I don’t think this was that great of a track.
Score
4/10
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Google+.
