Foster the People, Pumped Up Kicks | Controversial Tunes 😈🎶

In the 14^th edition of Controversial Tunes (2023), we explore the controversy behind the song, “Pumped Up Kicks” by Foster the People. 

Bring on the controversy! Controversial Tunes 😈🎶 is a column that provides background information and insight into songs that raised eyebrows and totally stirred the pot.  The records that grace Controversial Tunes are old and new alike, with all genres of music welcome.  In the 14^th edition of Controversial Tunes (2023), we explore the controversy behind the song, 🎵 “Pumped Up Kicks” by 🎙 Foster the People.

via GIPHY

“Robert’s got a quick hand / He’ll look around the room, he won’t tell you his plan.” Hmm, that’s disturbing and totally unsettling 😱.  Furthermore, 🎙 Mark Foster, the lead singer of 🎙 Foster The People, adds to the damning nature of 🎵 “Pumped Up Kicks”: “Yeah, he found a six-shooter gun / In his dad’s closet with a box of fun things /… But he’s coming for you, yeah, he’s coming for you, wait.” Yikes 😬! HOLY HELL! HOLY SHIITAKE MUSHROOMS! The point is, clearly, Foster The People paint Robert as a dangerous kid, even if they don’t directly characterize him as a school shooter.  In a Billboard interview with Foster, he asserts, “the school shooting part of it was never spoken about in the song. I think people filled in the blanks that it was about a school shooting, but I never say anything about a school in the song.” Still, the second track from their 2011 album, 💿 Torches, feels inspired by such, and Foster later asserts it was “reacting to the idea [of a shooting]” more so than “reacting to [a] shooting itself”.  What makes the song eerier is the fact that it sounds brighter than it should despite such dark subject matter – oh, the musical contradiction!

“All the other kids with the pumped up kicks

You better run, better run, out run my gun

All the other kids with the pumped up kicks

You better run, better run faster than my bullet.”

😬!!! Things only get more troubling in the second verse, where there seems to be trauma in some regard via coded lyrics (“And he’s [Daddy] bringing me a surprise / ‘Cause dinner’s in the kitchen and it’s packed in ice”).  Robert goes on to assert, “Yeah, the sleight of my hand is now a quick-pull trigger.” So, however the perpetrator is traumatized, he plans to inflict trauma on others.  The controversy writes itself on “Pumped Up Kicks,” which spent 40 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 and peaked at no. 3. However, following the events of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting on December 14, 2012, radio dropped “Pumped Up Kicks”. The why should be obvious. Notably, Parkland school shooter, Nikolas Cruz, watched the music video “Kicks” prior to the mass shooting – DISTURBING! In 2019, Mark Foster spoke about retiring the song, for obvious reasons.  🎵 “Pumped Up Kicks” is an example of a  fine song that reflects a sad reality that shouldn’t be a reality in the U.S.

Appears in 🔻:

• Songs Written in the Aftermath of Columbine (2017)

🎙 Foster the People • 💿 Torches • 🏷 Sony Music Entertainment • 🗓 2011

Foster the People, “Pumped Up Kicks”: Controversial Tunes 😈🎶 No. 14 (2023) [📷: Brent Faulkner / The Musical Hype; Sony Music Entertainment; Anand Kulkarni, Aykut Bingül, Luân Phan, mohammadreza merhvand via Pexels; Anna, Gordon Taylor, harshahars from Pixabay; christian buehner on Unsplash]