Pumped Up Kicks

Some of my earliest memories include music. Singing along with songs on the radio, hearing music playing throughout the house while I baked Christmas cookies with my mom, or dancing to my CD player in my room. I’ve noticed more about the music that I grew up with as I really started analyzing the lyrics.

One of the songs that really stunned me was the song “Pumped Up Kicks”. I remember bopping along to this jam in the car, but listening to this song as an adult left me mortified. To be clear, I wasn’t mortified that the song exists, I was mortified that I had listened to it so many times without realizing what it was saying.

The Song

The song Pumped Up Kicks was written, sung by, produced, engineered, and even had the instruments played by Mark Foster. Since it came out in 2010, I had just started high school. As a young teenager, I spent way less time paying attention to what the song was about and spent more time enjoying the rhythm of the song. If you haven’t heard the song, or you don’t remember it, here it is:

The beat is super catchy, and it’s really hard to not start dancing along with it. Listening to the words, you realize that this song is not just a happy song with a good sound. This song has a much darker meaning than I realized.

The Lyrics

I think the best way to explain the meaning is to break down the lyrics. Here’s the first verse:

Robert's got a quick hand
He'll look around the room, he won't tell you his plan
He's got a rolled cigarette
Hanging out his mouth he's a cowboy kid
Yeah found a six shooter gun
In his dad's closet, oh in a box of fun things
I don't even know what
But he's coming for you, yeah he's coming for you

Without the music behind the words, they sound very threatening. We are introduced to the character in the song, Robert, and we know he’s planning something. We also know that he found a gun and considers it a “fun thing”. That’s enough to make my skin crawl.

All the other kids with the pumped up kicks
You'd better run, better run, outrun my gun
All the other kids with the pumped up kicks
You'd better run, better run, faster than my bullet
All the other kids with the pumped up kicks
You'd better run, better run, outrun my gun
All the other kids with the pumped up kicks
You'd better run, better run, faster than my bullet

The chorus kicks in with a playful beat, but we are told that everyone should run, and they have to be faster than his bullets. We don’t know what his motive is, but we are starting to see what the “plan” was that Robert talked about in the first verse.

Daddy works a long day
He be coming home late, and he's coming home late
And he's bringing me a surprise
'Cause dinner's in the kitchen and it's packed in ice
I've waited for a long time
Yeah the sleight of my hand is now a quick pull trigger
I reason with my cigarette
And say your hair's on fire, you must have lost your wits, yeah

I have to admit that even after reading this verse several times, I’m not sure what is happening. I just know that the voice behind the words sounds extremely sinister.

All the other kids with the pumped up kicks
You'd better run, better run, outrun my gun
All the other kids with the pumped up kicks
You'd better run, better run, faster than my bullet
All the other kids with the pumped up kicks
You'd better run, better run, outrun my gun
All the other kids with the pumped up kicks
You'd better run, better run, faster than my bullet

We have the chorus again, and this is the part where a lot of people start dancing again. It repeats a few more times, making it as memorable as “It’s a Small World” in Disney. It’s easy to remember the words and sing along with it, even if you aren’t fully aware what you are singing.

Mark Foster’s Interview

When I first started researching this song and looking more into the meaning behind it, all I could find was what I started to believe myself: that the song is about a school shooting.

Words like “kids” and “daddy’s closet” made me believe that Robert was a child or a teenager who still lived with his father. It even says later that his father is working a long day, and I assumed that he knew that because he was waiting at home for his dad to get home.

The room that Robert looks around in the first verse sounds like it could be a classroom, but again, I was making major assumptions and reading in between the lines.

Almost ten years after the song was written, Mark Foster was interviewed at Billboard about the hit song. The interviewer starts off by establishing that the song is about a school shooting, and then following it up by asking where he came up with the idea for the song. Foster responds by pointing out that no where in the song does it say it’s about a school shooting, and says that it’s a misconception that that’s the meaning of the song.

Foster continues by saying that the song is obviously about violent thoughts and that people filled in the blanks to come to the conclusion that it was about a school shooting. He mentions that the week that he wrote the song, another shooting had just occurred. When asked which shooting it was, he answered that he didn’t remember which one.

The song was written because Foster recognized that shootings were going to continue and that they were going to keep getting worse. The song was a warning.

Ten years after the song came out, Foster is considering retiring the song. The shootings have gotten worse, like he predicted, and the song is less of a warning and more of a trigger for people. So many people have been affected by a mass shooting, that Foster doesn’t want his music to be painful for his fans.

Foster is also aware that more than one mass shooter has used the song as inspiration or an anthem. He states that’s not why he writes music, and that’s not how he wants it used.

My Take

I think that Mark Foster’s warning wasn’t heard until people started realizing that they were dancing along to a song with lyrics that had such a dark message. As he predicted, shootings have continued and have gotten worse. The fact that he doesn’t remember the specific shooting that inspired the hit song proves that it’s a real problem.

I believe that Foster wanted this song to be a reminder that some people think this way, and instead his song was weaponized when murderers started using it as their theme song. I’m embarrassed that it took so long for me to realize what the song was saying, but I am so glad that I realized it. It just makes me sad to realize how little has changed in the past decade.

If you would like to read the whole interview, I will link it here. It was really interesting to read what Foster had to say about the song that made him famous. Happy learning!