Foster The People
Pumped Up Kicks
The song is about an loner kid that fantasizes about shooting up his school for revenge. Mark Foster, the bands frontman, wanted to write from a victim's perspective but decided instead to get into the killer's mind. According to him, it's supposed to be an anti-gun song. But some critics felt that he was exploiting the issue. "Pumped Up Kicks" holds a darker meaning behind its alt-pop dance sound. Foster wrote the track from the point of view of a deeply troubled youth named Robert, who's named only once at the beginning of the song. Robert's got a quick hand He'll look around the room, but won't tell you his plan ... Yeah, he found a six-shooter gun In his dad's closet, and with a box of fun things I don't even know what But he's coming for you, yeah, he's coming for you After finding his father's gun, Robert imagines others running from him as he wields the weapon. You better run, better run, outrun my gun. This scene never unfolds, though. Robert only imagines and toys with the idea of all the other kids running from him. It's a horror of the mind. "I wrote 'Pumped Up Kicks' when I began to read about the growing trend in teenage mental illness," Foster told CNN Entertainment in a 2012 interview. "I wanted to understand the psychology behind it because it was foreign to me. It was terrifying how mental illness among youth had skyrocketed in the last decade. I was scared to see where the pattern was headed if we didn't start changing the way we were bringing up the next generation."