Does anyone remember Gotye’s ‘Somebody That I Used To Know’? Of course you do, it was only the biggest music record back it 2011 and 2012. Every pub, bar and cafe played it on repeat, the amount of covers and remixes nearly equaled the number of copies it sold, and it even won the Grammy for Record of the Year.
After a few years of putting the song in a box and avoiding it like the plague, I dug it up again recently due to a spell of nostalgia. Once I listened to it and rewatched the music video a couple of times, I was struck by this realisation: ‘Somebody That I Used To Know’ is actually pretty problematic.
Now art is subjective and song lyrics can be interpreted in a number of ways. Some might view Gotye’s hit song as an empowering tune, but I couldn’t help but view ‘Somebody That I Used To Know’ as a song about an awful relationship told from the abusive guy’s POV.
The opening verse has Gotye singing “Told myself that you were right for me/But felt so lonely in your company,” which sounds pretty controlling and gives us a revealing look into how the guy didn’t really love the woman he was with.
The next verse suggests that he only hung around despite the relationship sucking because it’s something he’s used to (“You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness”).
When they break up, the woman says they should just be friends, which feels like a defensive answer that people give when they’re in an uncomfortable position (“Well you said that we would still be friends/But I’ll admit that I was glad it was over”).
The chorus is where it gets quite intense as Gotye sings “But you didn’t have to cut me off/Make out like it never happened and that we were nothing.” If the relationship was so bad for the guy, it would’ve likely been just as bad – if not worse – for the woman so it makes sense she would want to cut him off. However, it’s clear he doesn’t quite understand that and instead lashes out at her.
The next few lines (“But you treat me like a stranger and that feels so rough/No, you didn’t have to stoop so low”) dive deep into problematic territory as it all sounds like the guy trying to reclaim the control he had over the relationship and declare he doesn’t need it or her despite his actions to the contrary.
Yeah, this whole song isn’t totally a way of re-establishing contact so the guy can get back at the woman. Totally not.
When a woman goes so far as to get friends to collect her stuff and change her phone number (“Have your friends collect your records and then change your number”), then some seriously bad stuff must’ve went down for her to cut off all contact like that.
As Gotye sings “I guess that I don’t need that though/Now you’re just somebody that I used to know,” it reads like the guy still defining the woman by their relationship even though she’s made it clear there isn’t one.
When the woman starts singing her part of the song, she is clearly saying how problematic the guy was and how he always made it seem like wrong thing he did was her fault (“Now and then I think of all the times you screwed me over/But had me believing it was always something that I’d done”).
The woman then goes into more detail about their awful relationship and how many chances she’s given the guy before she realises that it’s best to cut all ties and just leave (“But I don’t wanna live that way/Reading into every word you say/You said that you could let it go/And I wouldn’t catch you hung up on somebody that you used to know”).
All this is also expressed visually in the music video, which sees Kimbra singing at Gotye as he stares at the camera instead of at her. Even as she moves towards him, trying to get a response or even just some eye contact, he refuses to look at her and drowns out her voice by singing the chorus (“But you didn’t have to cut me off”) instead.
That is not the actions of a man who realises what a problematic POS he’s been to the woman.
This is just one interpretation of ‘Somebody That I Used To Know’ and it’ll likely differ from someone else’s view of the song. Gotye has previously described the song as “a curated reflection of multiple past relationships” and it can easily viewed as empowering or shallow melancholy just as how I saw it as about abuse.
But that’s the beauty of art. It’s subjective and everyone has a different point of view on something. It just so happens that I think one of the biggest songs of the 2010s is a problematic statement wrapped in a colourful music video and seemingly misplaced wistfulness.