The unofficial “national anthem” of the United States, the way people jokingly refer to Foster The People‘s song.
This song came out when I was just a ten-year-old boy. It can’t be denied that the song’s catchy melody brought me increasing interest. But Pumped Up Kicks carries a darker meaning behind its alternative-pop dance music sound. The tone is upbeat but the story is, well, deadly.
How harsh!
Mark Foster was a jingle writer. He does commercially for brands like Verizon and Honey Bunches of Oats. Foster, however, recognized he had much to tell the world and had higher aspirations for himself. To help him bring his songs to life, he recruited buddy and bassist Cubbie Fink and drummer Mark Pontius. Together as Foster & The People, which evolved into Foster the People, the musicians released their debut song Pumped Up Kicks on September 14, 2010.
“Robert’s got a quick hand,
Pumped Up Kicks – Foster The People
He’ll look around the room, but won’t tell you his plan.
He’s got a rolled cigarette,
Hanging out his mouth, he’s a cowboy kid, yeah.”
Perhaps I read from the lyrics of this song about a cowboy’s gun-drawing skills. For someone who grew up watching Clint Eastwood movies, I was excited to imagine myself in the image of a cowboy kid, but holding a cigar like a grown man.
“He found a six-shooter gun,
In his dad’s closet, and with a box of fun things.
I don’t even know what,
But he’s coming for you, yeah, he’s coming for you.…
Daddy works a long day.
He’d be coming home late, yeah, he’s coming home late.
And he’s bringing me a surprise,
‘Cause dinner’s in the kitchen, and it’s packed in ice.I’ve waited for a long time,
Pumped Up Kicks – Foster The People
Yeah, the sleight of my hand is now a quick pull trigger.
I reason with my cigarette,
Then say, “Your hair’s on fire, you must have lost your wits, yeah.”
A cowboy kid is adorable until he finds a gun from his irresponsible father. Nothing limits him but his imagination. What’s even scarier is that he’s self-aware of his insanity.
“I wrote Pumped Up Kicks when I began to read about the growing trend in teenage mental illness,” Foster told CNN Entertainment in a 2012 interview. “I wanted to understand the psychology behind it because it was foreign to me. It was terrifying how mental illness among youth had skyrocketed in the last decade. I was scared to see where the pattern was headed if we didn’t start changing the way we were bringing up the next generation.”
The song refers to “guns” literally, although this was not always the case. The song’s chorus was originally written using “guns” as a metaphor for confidence in the lyrics. That all changed during a recording session when Foster came up with the first verse, which he took free rein to write. This verse changed the tone of the song by making the word “gun” literal and was clearly about a boy finding his father’s gun.
“All the other kids with the pumped up kicks,
Pumped Up Kicks – Foster The People
You better run, better run outrun my gun.
All the other kids with the pumped up kicks,
You better run, better run faster than my bullet.”
Here’s some information about the “pumped up kicks” that the other kids in the song are wearing:
The basketball shoe called the Reebok Pump was quite popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The shoe featured a basketball-shaped pump on the tongue, and the idea was to pump it up a few times if you needed a little extra lift. Reebok was in a tough spot at the time because Nike had Michael Jordan selling their sneakers. The most memorable moment in Pumps history happened when Boston Celtics player Dee Brown won the 1991 Slam Dunk Contest wearing the shoes. He reached down and inflated his Pumps right before the decisive dunk, a moment that Reebok captured in their shoe commercial.
These shoes are very expensive and children from families who can afford them are often seen as privileged hypocrites.
The narrator implies that he is jealous of his classmates’ expensive shoes.
Foster explained the song’s meaning to Spinner UK: “Pumped Up Kicks is about a kid that basically is losing his mind and is plotting revenge. He’s an outcast. I feel like the youth in our culture are becoming more and more isolated. It’s kind of an epidemic. Instead of writing about victims and some tragedy, I wanted to get into the killer’s mind, like Truman Capote did in In Cold Blood. I love to write about characters. That’s my style. I really like to get inside the heads of other people and try to walk in their shoes.”
It can be seen that lack of care and isolation can cause not only children but also adults to have long-term psychological problems.
Foster claimed that he considered writing the song from the victim’s perspective, but realized that would be an abdication of responsibility. He also stressed that the threats in the song were purely the child’s internal monologue and that there was no actual violence involved. MTV censored the song when they played the video, cutting out the audio whenever Foster sang “gun” or “bullet”.
In Rolling Stone magazine, Foster shared: “I was trying to get inside the head of an isolated, psychotic kid. It’s a f–k you song to hipsters, in a way – but it’s a song the hipsters are going to want to dance to.”
The above chorus is repeated seven times in the song over a rhythmic drum beat, steady whistle with bass and electronic horns pounding in the bustling atmosphere that seems to express more than just running footsteps. In my opinion, this represents quick decisions that often lead to mistakes.
There is a fragility from thoughts in the mind to leading to behavior. Many people believe that the song promotes school shootings.
After the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in December 2012, which left 20 children and six staff members dead, the song was taken off the radio. In an effort to start a dialogue about the need for change, Mark Foster said he wrote the song on the rising prevalence of mental illness among youth. He agreed that the track should be removed out of respect for the victims. To this day, the sight of a taciturn, antisocial student humming this song remains a haunting sight in American schools.
As for me, this song is still great thanks to the memorable melody and real message from Foster The People.
