“Pumped Up Kicks” by Foster the People, Saturday, November 6, 2021

My generation has had a few sobering news days, but in 1999 very little struck more fear into the hearts of American students and parents than turning on the news on April 20, seeing the horrifying scenes of the massacre at Columbine High School. In the way that September 11 changed aviation forever, Columbine changed education. There had been school shootings in the U.S. before, but none had the scope of planning of Columbine. So much information came out about the victims and perpetrators after the shooting for years to come. There were several distinct responses I remember growing up immersed in the evangelical South. First, it was that shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were into the gothic scene, wearing all black, keeping nihilistic journals, and listening to music like Marylin Manson, Korn, and The Insane Clown Posse. This music was clearly satanic and could lead teens to commit mass shootings. Second, the testimony of Cassie Burnell, the girl whom, years later, was misreported to been asked, "Do you believe in God?" and was killed because she said, "Yes" was preached as a message of religious martyrdom. There was also a third view that grew in popularity. But it was seen as too unAmerican in the evangelical South.

DADDY WORKS A LONG DAY. In 2011 when "Pumped Up Kicks" hit number 3 on the Hot 100 and topped the Alternative Rock chart, a few listeners started to have some reservations about the song. Written by former commercial jingle writer Mark Foster, "Pumped Up Kicks" is a dancy track sounding like it's from the '60s or '70s. The song was released online as a free download and started getting virally famous. Foster played all the instruments on the song, but formed a band in order to play live when "Pumped Up Kicks" gained popularity enough to sign him to Startime Records, an imprint of Columbia Records. Foster at first explained the lyrics as a "'Fuck you' to hipsters." Essentially, he created the equivalent of what the Mel Brooks did in The Producers when Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom produce a should-be-doomed musical titled Springtime for Hitler. There had been songs about school shootings before. P.O.D.'s "Youth of the Nation," Flyleaf's "Cassie," Michael W. Smith's "This Is Your Time," and Rebecca St. James' "Yes, I Believe in God" all were somber religious songs about the what did or what could happen in a school shooting. But "Pumped Up Kicks" was similar to a 1979 song by an Irish group The Boomtown Rats, singing about a school school shooting earlier that year in their major U.K. minor U.S. hit "I Don't Like Mondays." Foster claims that the story in "Kicks" is completely fictional, but it does make you wonder about if you should be dancing to a song about a shooting, real or imagined.

YOU'D BETTER RUN, BETTER RUN, FASTER THAN MY GUN. Foster told Billboard in 2019 that the song never mentioned a school, but that listeners had "filled in the blanks." The song was inspired by hearing about a shooting on TV. He told Billboard, "I remember that week [that I wrote the song], there was some shooting that happened, and it really bothered me, because I recognized that it was going to continue to get worse. And that nothing was going to change." He's also told USA Today that the song "isn't about condoning violence at all. . . . The song is an amazing platform to have a conversation with your kids about something that shouldn't be ignored." When Foster the People became a band, bassist Jacob "Cubbie" Fink (future husband of the aforementioned CCM singer Rebecca St. James) said that his cousin was a survivor of the Columbine Shooting. He saw the songs as a platform to talk about violence. In 2002, controversial film director Michael Moore made a film called Bowling for Columbine in which he argued that American gun lobbyist group The National Riffle Association (NRA) was responsible for keeping guns easily accessible to those with malicious intent. Many dismissed Moore's claims as being too far left and even attacked his research. However, mass shootings, both in and out of the classroom continue to escalate in scope and scale in the United States. After Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, the Amish shooting, church shootings, synagogue shootings, mosque shootings, the Colorado theater shooting, the Las Vegas concert shooting, the Pulse night club shooting, are just the ones off the top of my head. I remember watching the episode "Thoughts and Prayers" of Bojack Horseman's fourth season the day before the Las Vegas concert shooting. That episode darkly parodies the American's inability to do anything to prevent shootings. What we can do is offer "thoughts and prayers" constantly. The reaction to the Vegas shooting by the NRA was "It's not the time to talk about gun control" when people are extremely upset about it. This isn't new, and they say this all the time. As if the NRA is waiting around for the perfect time to broach the subject when people are calm, cool, and collected. I used to think that a dancey indie track wasn't the best platform to talk about gun violence, but it's become so common in American society, that I start to wonder why not? Gun violence can happen at anytime or place these days. Why not talk about it.

Read “Pumped Up Kicks” by Foster the People on Genius.

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