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10:49 · 1,827 words of transcript · watch on YouTube
- The numbers behind the one-hit-wonder claim: eight weeks at number one on the Hot 100, number one in 18 countries, and the first song to sell over five million copies in the first half of a year.
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- He did not come from nowhere. Two earlier albums had already won national acclaim in Australia, including a Triple J listener poll win, an ARIA for best male artist and an iTunes album of the year in the UK.
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- That success paid for a permanent studio in a barn on his parents' farm, where the third album and the hit were recorded.
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- The global feel is literal. The track samples Brazilian jazz guitarist Luiz Bonfa, which supplies the Latin loop built from two repeated notes.
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- The percussion mixes Afro-Cuban bongos with South American tango influence, and the hook sits on a xylophone-like tone that resembles a nursery rhyme, which is part of why it lodges so fast.
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- The structure breaks the top-40 rule. Instead of reaching the chorus quickly it runs two full verses first, making the listener wait for the payoff.
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- The back-and-forth of the sample itself suggested the subject, the pattern of a relationship going back and forth, which is where the writing came from.
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- The second voice was an afterthought. He felt the song was incomplete and decided it should be a duet structured as a dialogue, giving the other person a reply.
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- Casting it was painful: a high-profile Australian artist cancelled late, his girlfriend's take did not fit, and he had nearly given up before Kimbra, six months later.
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- Her verse makes him an unreliable narrator, revealing that his behaviour during the relationship hurt her more than his half suggested, which is what lifts the song above a breakup complaint.
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