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8:15 · 1,334 words of transcript · watch on YouTube
- The gap between the sound and the subject is the whole story: a relaxed tropical arrangement carrying a song about a teenager planning to shoot his classmates.
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- It became a breakthrough despite that, reaching number three on the Hot 100 for eight weeks and finishing as Spotify's most streamed song of 2011.
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- Mark Foster was working as a commercial jingle writer in Los Angeles, and wrote the song on a day off instead of going to the beach.
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- The chorus came first and the gun in it was originally a metaphor, with the song meant to be about self-confidence and getting ahead of other kids.
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- It changed when he improvised the first verse during a recording session, at which point the weapon became literal.
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- The title refers to Reebok Pumps, basketball shoes you inflated at the tongue, which cost twice what ordinary sneakers did and so mark the narrator's exclusion.
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- The character's circumstances are sketched quickly: a father working long hours, microwave dinners, and no prospect of affording the shoes.
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- The craft is a deliberate blend of eras, a drum pattern out of Fleetwood Mac's Dreams, an insistent bass hook, 1980s synths, 1960s sunny harmony and a whistled section.
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- He finished the demo in eight hours and that demo is the version everyone knows, which explains why it ends on repeated choruses.
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- The backlash came as letters to his label and to radio stations accusing the song of glorifying school shootings, and his answer has been that it is an observation of youth culture and mental illness rather than an endorsement.
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