2011Released
4:05

Did You Know?

Interesting facts and trivia about Somebody That I Used to Know. By Songfacts®.

Belgian-born Wally De Backer is an indie rock singer-songwriter who records under the name of Gotye. He moved with his family to Australia at the age of 2 and has been releasing music there since 2001. De Backer achieved a breakthrough with his second album Like Drawing Blood, which was voted # in the Triple J listeners poll of the Best Album of 2006. This is the second single from De Backer's third album, Making Mirrors. The LP was released in the summer of 2011 and went to #1 in Australia.

The song features New Zealand singer-songwriter Kimbra, who won her country's Critics' Choice awards in 2011; the award is intended to recognize and nurture up-coming talent. Gotye didn't begin writing this song as a duet, but after he finished the first verse, he realized he had nowhere to go with the character he was writing about, and needed to introduce another voice.

"Somebody" was both produced and written by Gotye in his parents' barn on the Mornington Peninsula, south-east of Melbourne. It finds Gotye addressing a past lover, reminiscing about their relationship and break-up. The song draws from the aftermath and memory of several relationships, but he told Rolling Stone Australia that one does resound louder than the others. "There is an ex-girlfriend I know." he admitted. "It was five-six years ago. It wasn't a nasty breakup, but it was messy in the sense that we hurt each other more than we needed to because it wasn't a clean break. I guess it's closest to what the chorus is about. We both realized we had to move on and we haven't seen each other since."

Top Listeners

Song Analysis

Key, BPM (tempo) and time signature of Somebody That I Used to Know.
CKey
MajorMode
4/4Time Signature
129BPM

Album

The album Somebody That I Used to Know is released on.

Released By

The record label that has released Somebody That I Used to Know.
Samples 'n' Seconds Records
(C) 2011 Samples 'n' Seconds Records distributed by V2 Benelux
(P) 2011 Samples n Seconds Records under exclusive license to V2 Benelux

See your Spotify stats (with number of plays and minutes listened) and discover new music.

Music data, artist images, album covers, and song previews are provided by Spotify. Spotify is a trademark of Spotify AB.

5.8MArtists
73.5MSongs
12.3MAlbums
6.3KGenres
2.5MLabels
493KPlaylists