In Which I Am Impossibly Dense: Gotye Edition

After only twenty years of having first heard the song, I realized that Madonna’s “Like A Prayer” wasn’t actually about praying. I’m bad at this stuff. Help!

A bunch of years ago – 30, maybe? – an overly serious man named Gotye released a song called “Somebody That I Used To Know.” It was a ubiquitous song at the time. The song even ended up getting covered on Glee (which was also very popular) and, like Jonathan Franzen before him, Gotye whinged about being forced to accept even more money than the original had already generated for him. Artists gonna artist.

The song itself is simple enough. Gotye and a second singer, Kimbra, document the collapse and aftermath of a once-promising relationship. Their takes on what happened are predictably skewed – much like Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon before it, or perhaps its more modern contemporary, Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me” – and the song ends without it being entirely clear what it was exactly that tanked the relationship.

Except that Gotye – although he might have been portraying a character, we are going to treat Gotye and Kimbra as actual characters in this – is the almost certainly the reason things went south. Right?

The Case For Gotye

To hear Gotye tell his tale of woe, things were fine. Fine.

Now and then I think of when we were together
Like when you said you felt so happy you could die

See? She was so happy that she could have died, which is an entirely normal thing that absolutely cannot be interpreted in any way other than her time with him was utter ecstasy. Except:

Told myself that you were right for me
But felt so lonely in your company
But that was love and it’s an ache I still remember

Almost immediately we are given reasons to suspect that Gotye is up to no good. Here he presents himself as the victim – sure, he was lonely, poor guy – but an apparently willing one, given that he aches for it.

You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness
Like resignation to the end, always the end
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 that it was over

Ha ha, sure you were glad it was over guy, absolutely. You were so glad that you wrote a song about it much later in which you portray yourself as the victim and your ex-girlfriend as the monster who left you lonely. Glad is definitely the word that describes such behavior. But do, go on:

But you didn’t have to cut me off
Make out like it never happened and that we were nothing
And I don’t even need your love
But you treat me like a stranger and that feels so rough

Jilted ex-boyfriend is one thing. This behavior is something else entirely. Ignore for a moment that Gotye is still at his, “I’m the victim!” shtick and focus instead on what she’s doing: completely excising him from her life. “Cut me off” and “never happened” and “nothing” is somewhat serious behavior for a break-up that just a few seconds earlier had been described as two people discovering that “we could not make sense.” That “we” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here given the behavior being subsequently described.

No you didn’t have to stoop so low
Have your friends collect your records and then change your number
I guess that I don’t need that though
Now you’re just somebody that I used to know
Now you’re just somebody that I used to know
Now you’re just somebody that I used to know

Sending friends for belongings? Changing phone numbers? What was Gotye doing exactly, besides being an utter maniac?

The Case For Kimbra

Suppose that the conclusion from Gotye’s first attempt at his own story was a sort of nervous indifference.  “Yeah, maybe he really was the victim here,” we might think, “but goodness, some of that stuff in there wasn’t good, and he was the one doing the storytelling, and he was the one in a position to stack the facts as sympathetically as possible.”

Then take Kimbra’s version for a spin:

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
And 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 

Here’s some exclusive footage of Kimbra’s portion of the song, in which she describes Goyte as, at best, a manipulative jerk, and at worst, as an obsessed loser, all before laying waste to the idea that she really is somebody that Gotye used to know. That it takes her a quarter of the song’s total lyrics to eviscerate him is all the more telling.

The Case For Gotye

Thoroughly humiliated, Gotye’s attempt to curry sympathy goes…badly.

But you didn’t have to cut me off
Make out like it never happened and that we were nothing

Yes, she did have to cut you off, you creepy weirdo. You were an awful human being. And still are, frankly.

And I don’t even need your love
But you treat me like a stranger and that feels so rough

He might as well have trotted out the internet’s staple “Actually, I’m not even mad right now. I find this funny.”

No you didn’t have to stoop so low
Have your friends collect your records and then change your number
I guess that I don’t need that though
Now you’re just somebody that I used to know

Repeating the evidence of his own monstrousness isn’t enough to convince him. She sent her friends. She changed her number. She did everything imaginable to cut ties between them.

Somebody, I used to know
(Somebody) Now you’re just somebody that I used to know
Somebody, I used to know
(Somebody) Now you’re just somebody that I used to know
I used to know, that I used to know, I used to know somebody

There’s what he’s saying about himself, and there’s what he is actually doing, and those appear to be two wildly divergent things.

Except

But, again, I didn’t realize that “Like A Prayer” wasn’t about praying at all*. On the rare occasions that I actually listen to lyrics – unlike my wife and daughters, who are capable of remembering all lyrics to all songs, seemingly whether or not they themselves have actually heard them, I cannot even remember lyrics to my most favorite songs – I struggle to tease out their meaning.

So then maybe then I am wrong about this one. Maybe Gotye isn’t the monster that he appears to me. Maybe Kimbra really did treat him badly. Maybe it is in fact remarkable that I am able to consume any media at all without my brain shortcircuiting.

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*Apparently, I’m just bad at figuring out sex stuff.