Lyrical Rhetoric

Mark Foster, the writer of "Pumped Up Kicks" is a true jingle writer. In the song, along with his band
Foster the People, try to relay a message aboout shootings. I feel as if being a jingle writer is to his advantage. The song repeats itself multiple times, making it hard to forget. It's easy to listen to and something I think kids would easily pick up on, but does that mean they understand? I find it somewhat odd that you can't really understand what is being said until the chorus, which may be one of the most important parts. I believe that the situation they are referring to is a child bringing a gun to school and causing a shooting. I also think that the song says he isn't sure why, but then continues to say his dad comes home late. This caused me to think that his family problems mad him angry so he took it out on the "weaker" people, the ones that couldn't "run away" so to speak. I can't actually figure out why they talk about "pumped up kicks". One way I thought about it would be other kids that are going through the same thing as him, or people of "his kind".

I think that Foster the People portray this song very well, and I think they get the message across in a way that is easy for many people to understand. You really don't have to do much reading in between the lines to understand what is going on. As I said earlier, I couldn't really understand what most of the song was saying until I looked up the lyrics. I think that the weird voice kind of adds to the situtaion. Like everything is kind of sketchy as the childs anger is built up, but once he finally goes off the voice in the song becomes clear. I also think this could be a way to have people listen to the song more. After a while people are going to get tired of only knowing a couple of words, and are going to look up the lyrics like all of us did. After looking up the lyrics, I wanted to know more about the author. I don't think this song really tells much about him as an author, but more tells a story. That doesn't mean this is his story, but I think that is also another way to draw in the audience.

Karah Trinkle
Word Count(411)