Tim: Here’s a live performance. Even though we never do live performances here. I’ll explain in a bit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yn2r48o0bs8
Tom: I was constantly distracted by Background Percussion Man during that video.
Tim: Fair enough.
Tom: Fair enough?! Have you seen the man? He’s grooving. Grooving like few men have ever grooved before.
Tim: Well, you’ve clearly forgotten what I get up to on the dancefloor, haven’t you. Anyway, I think we may be getting distracted here. I love this song, almost entirely because of that chorus. It is, in my view (and therefore it just is), utterly fantastic.
Tom: Now, that’s unusual for you; I’d have called you as saying it’s a bit boring. Why d’you like it so much?
Tim: Seriously? It has a brilliant tune (repeated often, but here not a bad thing), and the words – aside from not making much sense until you remember that ‘kicks’ is an American synonym for (what we two Brits, at least, call) ‘trainers’ – are great, with a ‘run run run, faster than my bullet’ sense of encouragement and enthusiasm.
Once you throw the verses in, though, it becomes a bit dodgy, because in the recorded version they’re all mushed up, so much so that it’s almost unlistenable (hence the live version).
Tom: Ah, the old Postal Service trick.
Tim: Yeah, and it’s as annoying for me here as it was there.
In their defense, there’s a good reason they’ve become mushed up: the lyrics, when listened to properly, turn the ‘faster than my bullet’ from a metaphor into an instruction*, and that’s really not radio-friendly (though that did apparently disappoint the band, who wanted it there as an anti-gun message to get people thinking and all that). But still, it goes a fair way to putting me off the whole song, which is a proper shame.
Tom: You like it, then?
Tim: All in: I love the chorus, I’m not so keen on the verse. But it’s still one of my favourite tracks of the year.
Tom: How unexpected.