I Can't Believe It's Been 10 Years Since "Somebody That I Used To Know" Took Over My Life

I fully acknowledge I have probably the most midwestern caucasian taste in music. I can’t help it. I’m a simpleton. With that said, when I think of young high school Chris going through his first heartbreak in the summer of 2012, it’s this song that comes to mind. I’m not sure what people think of it nowadays. I know it won many Grammy awards, but much like many #1 hits, it probably suffered from a fair amount of overplay. But for me? I couldn’t have played this song enough back in the day.

This song, and even more so the artists who performed it, were fucking enigmas. I had a crisis last night because I was genuinely starting to wonder if Gotye and Kimbra were real people or simply figments of my imagination that I made up to help me get over heartbreak. Are they still alive? Are they still making music? I did a deep dive (looked at their Wikipedia pages) last night and found they continue to make music and tour, mainly overseas. 

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The term “One-hit wonder” tends to get overused sometimes. For the most part, most one-hit wonders find their way back on the charts with a less successful follow-up single, but as far as Gotye and Kimbra are concerned, you got nothing, at least not in America. You had “Somebody That I Used To Know,” and that’s it. And hey, maybe you’ve kept up with and continued to enjoy their music. Nothing wrong with that. These two made the defining jam of my angsty teenage years. They are aces in my book forever. But it is bizarre, isn’t it? This wasn’t “Mambo No. 5,” or one of those random novelty hits from the ’90s. This was a mainstream hit responsible for cover after cover (including that awesome one by “Walk Off The Earth”). 

Maybe these two were just too bizarre to be sustainable (though bizarre never stopped anyone. If it did, I wouldn’t be writing this blog), but damn, what an anthem this was. It's a top 10 all-time song in the Chris Castellani catalog.