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Rob Stevenson, then vp of A&R, said at the time: “I have never seen a domino effect go this fast.” Gotye and Kimbra later performed the song on Saturday Night Live (in the same episode, Andy Samberg and Taran Killam spoofed the video, painting their bodies and posing as a painting), the cast of Glee revamped it, and at the 2013 Grammys it took home three awards, including record of the year. Within three months of the song’s release, Gotye signed a recording contract with Universal label Republic. “ someone at the end of the seminar said, ‘And then there’s this one anomaly, which is ‘Somebody That I Used to Know.’” “People were breaking down the trends in pop music over the last few years, and the melodic math that came out of the Swedish influence like Denniz Pop and Max Martin and Dr. He also thinks the track’s abandonment of standard Top 40 structure may have led to it standing out a bit more in the mainstream, recalling a pop songwriting class a friend of his had described taking. Gotye Apparently Turned Down Millions in YouTube Royalties And after the official audio arrived - followed by an eye-popping and quickly viral video, in which Gotye and co-star Kimbra appeared naked and painted against a blank wall, as if fading into the wallpaper - “Somebody That I Used to Know” ended up climbing the Billboard Hot 100, eventually topping the chart for eight weeks. “I was gearing up to put Making Mirrors out independently - I had tried different labels and people had expressed interest, but nothing had come to fruition - and wasn’t quite sure beyond releasing it in Australia, where I already had something of an audience.”īefore Making Mirrors’ second single, “Somebody That I Used to Know,” was even officially released, the leaked audio had appeared on iTunes soon enough, radio stations in Australia, Belgium and Holland started playing the track.

“ hadn’t changed the game for me, and based upon that, I didn’t have any expectations,” De Backer says. He was getting ready to release his third album, Making Mirrors, on the Universal-distributed indie Eleven: A Music Company, and had already shared its lead single, the racing, uptempo “Eyes Wide Open.” “It was the starting point of a few years of the song and video running around the world” - taking Gotye with it.Īt the time, in mid-2011, Gotye was already an established artist in his native Australia.

#KIMBRA ALBUM COVERS SERIES#

“From that moment on, a series of surprises kept happening,” the artist born Wouter “Wally” De Backer in Belgium recalls.

Kimbra album covers