Somebody that I Used
to Know
*Authors note: a few words have been altered/ignored
to make this song PG rated.
Imagine this. You're upset about something that
happened. You're sitting on your bedroom
floor, on your favorite purple bean bag chair.
You're listening to the radio.
You're flipping thorough stations like your life depends on it. You pass lots of artists: Adele, Taylor Swift, Bruno Mars, Gotye, Katy
Perry; then you stop. You slowly flip
back to the Gotye cover of "Somebody that I used to Know". Why?
The music, the message, the lyrics; the song seems it has a meaning, a
story. What is this story really saying?
What does this song mean? What
makes it so magnetic? In my eyes it narrates a relationship pattern
that seems to happen to a lot of people.
The first verse
starts with the line "Now and then I think of when we were
together." This seems like the
narrator is happily looking back at a relationship, but then comes the next few
lines. "Like when you said you felt
so happy you could die. Told myself that
you were right for me. But felt so
lonely in your company." The line
"Like when you said you felt so happy you could die" shows that the
girl in the relationship was content, but there was a start of a shadow. A doubt.
This doubt started eating away at the relationship. Then it says "told myself that you were
right for me. But felt so lonely in your
company." The narrator is trying to
convince himself that he is happy, even after there isn't anything left. He doesn't feel like he is still part of the
relationship. This would seem to mean
that the girl did something wrong. She
wasn't really there. Neither of them
were really happy, but they still held on.
They tried to hold a boat together even after the pieces were breaking
off. This is explained in the next
line. "But that was love and it's
an ache I still remember." This
means that he thought that they were in love, but love doesn't leave you aching,
or resentful towards love. They were
both pretending to have something that didn't exist, like how you can't swim in
the air. No matter how hard you try, you still need water.
The second verse is
kind of a bridge. The first verse is
narrating what happened and the chorus talks about their feelings. The second half of the verse is somewhere in
between. The first line says "You
can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness." This means that he doesn't even think that
the girl wanted to be happy, but it also
literally meant that she can mentally get addicted to being unhappy and always
wanting more. The next line further says
"Like resignation to the end, always the end." This illustrates that she was gone up until
it was actually over. This could be
interpreted two different ways. She could have been purposely ignorant, or she
could have been afraid of the relationship.
She may have been too afraid that she would end up hurt to actually
try. The verse ends with "So when
we found that we could not make sense;
Well you said that we would still be friends;. But I'll admit that I was glad it was
over." This just says that he was
happy when it was finally over because he hated the pressure and the
instability of the relationship. This
paragraph walks the fine line of emotions and narration wit lots of double
meanings.
The chorus is mostly
talking about how the guy felt. I don't
mean this in a bad way, but he seems to have the regular guyish reaction. He doesn't seem to care, but then he talks
about how much it hurt him. He really
seems to have conflicting emotions in this paragraph. First he says " But you didn't have to
cut me off. Make out like it never
happened and that we were nothing"
This seems like he was mad that she was so distant and that she didn't
care about the relationship . Then in
the next line "And I don't even need your love" he sounds like he
doesn't care what happened and that it didn't really matter to him. He contradicts that in the next line by
saying "But you treat me like a stranger and I feel so rough." This shows that he actually cares and is
upset by how she treated him. Then, he
goes back to mad by saying "And you didn't have to stoop so low, Have your
friends collect your records and then change your number." That means that she left glimpses of her past
behind but was still unreachable. She
left others to pick up the left over pieces once she was gone, but she never
came back to the people. After this
second string of anger the guy goes back to trying to look tough while
convincing himself to get over it. He
conveys this message by saying "I guess that I don't need that
though." He said "I
guess" like he wasn't totally sure, but he still is trying to protect
himself "I don't need that though."
He finishes his chorus by saying "Now you're just somebody that I
used to know." Basically, you're
gone now. I used to know you, but it's
over. Throughout this verse the guy is a
mess of emotions and conflicting thoughts.
Right now, the girl
seems at fault, right? Let's see her
point of view. She starts off by saying
"Now and then I think of all the times you screwed me over" He seems to be lying about something. Rest of analysis of this line is cut out to keep
essay PG. Next, she says
"Part of me believing it was always something that I'd done." This seems like the guy always blamed her for
things, and made her feel inferior by making it her
fault. Then she explains why she
left with the line "But I don't wanna live that way" I won't keep
letting you do this. "Reading into
every word you say" She's saying that he never told her the whole truth
and that she had to read through all the holes in his stories. "You said that you could let it go"
He said that he could forget his past and move on (which by his chorus, he
doesn't seem too good at). "And I
wouldn't catch you hung up on somebody that you used to know" He said he
could move on, but he couldn't. It was too
hard for him to look past himself and what he wanted. This is called Narcissism. It means that they can't see others needs
above their own. He couldn't get past his needs, and it cost him the girl. Now it seems like the girl got out of a bad
situation while she still could.
So, now that you
know the whole story, these are my final thoughts. Both people did things wrong. Nobody's perfect. The girl was playing with his emotions. Like in that one Brittany Spears song. She just got lost in love and didn't realize
what was happening. On the other hand,
the guy was lying and couldn't get past himself. Both people did things wrong. They tried to make things work, but with a
girl with the awareness of Brittany Spears and a guy with the self worth of
Narcissus, things just couldn't work.
This general scenario happens with lots of couples. Both people did things wrong, but for
whatever reason they only see the other's faults.
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