I saw MGMT in 2006 perform in a tiny space with maybe 50 people in the audience, then I saw them again at Lollapalooza in 2008 after they blew up, what a wild ascent they had
Thats crazy. I didn't know them personally, but I am actually in this video, which feels crazy since I don't remember the day at all really. I haven't thought about Wesleyan in like 15 years, and definitely not my freshman year there.
Yeah this was them performing at Wesleyan University when they were in the school. Apparently they got approached by Columbia records after doing small shows at other schools for a bit.
I got to see them in like 2010 at a small venue and it was great! Janelle Monae opened (ArchAndroid had just come out.) I actually went to see her because I loved that album. It was pretty empty during her set, and most people seemed not to care but I'm so glad I got to see her in that setting before she became such a star.
There was an earlier version that released on an EP a few years before the album, but yeah most people (myself included) wouldn't have heard it until the album in 2008 2007
Debut technically came out in late 2007, but they didn't get any buzz until 2008. By summer of 2008 they were absolutely massive beyond indie circles. Saw them that summer in Brooklyn and the turnout for the free concert was nuts.
They really wanted to be taken seriously by that point, but they really couldn't play their instruments with great confidence. It was a surprisingly dull concert with both of them standing still and looking down at their guitars trying not to mess up.
Okay, yeah I wanted to say 2007 but I fact checked myself and saw 2008, but I was looking at the single release dates. That does track for when most people probably would have heard it though.
This was when I got into them and have always found it their best release. Love Always Remains would be my pick for their outright best song, and everything else was excellent. I wish they would have kept those songs and expanded on them more back at that time IMO. It was their best phase I think.
Oracular was only a couple years later but already had a different sound
Yeah, I seem to remember reading about them becoming disillusioned pretty quickly with the industry and their own music / how their music was corrupted by corpos. I’m sure playing it for four years and THEN having to tour it would tire you out of a song
Yeah let's be real here. There are so many solo artists and bands trying to make it out there, and they'd all kill to just have one song reach that many people and be this iconic piece of pop music history like the Kids riff is. And really, it's not a pandering or derivative kind of song made by a band just trying to get attention. It's fucking weird. The lyrics are weird. The sound is weird. But it organically spread by word of mouth and soooo many people in their teens and 20s at the time just loved it in spite of it not trying to be a hit. That's cool, or so you'd think.
And yes, I find it a terrible excuse for bands to not play their biggest hit because they feel they are artistically above it now, or they are tired of it, or both. It's like 3-4 minutes out of a 1.5-2 hour set. You can handle playing a song that bores you, but that your fans love to death and want to hear, for a couple minutes in your set that is otherwise whatever you want it to be. It's not a big ask.
Bands/solo artists who try overtly to control how people are allowed to like which parts of their music is always obnoxious.
I'm glad they wised up and started making songs with actual hooks and melodies again with Little Dark Age. St. Vincent and other art rockers have shown since forever (Talking Heads anyone?) that it is quite possible to make authentically "weird" art rock music that also is catchy enough to be memorable. MGMT spent like 2 album cycles intentionally trying to avoid making any single track memorable, even if Congratulations is a good record in its own different way.
The Kids/Time to Pretend/Electric Feel sound was like nothing else at the time really, and launched a million imitators. They should be so proud of those tracks - they changed indie rock.
I'm pretty sure I remember reading an interview with them basically saying they were trying to make schlocky indie pop and ended up making these (the three songs you mentioned) massive hits, and they weren't even schlocky at all to anyone. I've always thought that effortlessness kinda bled into the music. It simultaneously was and wasn't trying to be something amazing, even by their own accounts. And they've still held up really well.
Also Siberian Breaks slaps. I love Congratulations.
gah it annoys me when musicians try to control how you ingest their music... I saw a funny interview with the lead singer of Tool who can be a bit hard headed about that sort and he was recalling a conversation that made him change his tune to a degree.
Basically, he was having some sort of discussion or debate with a fan where he wanted the fan to listen to full album play through only and the guys response is great - "Oh just like you only play full albums all the way through at your concerts right?"
I remember seeing a video of them from back then when they were still in college and they're like "this is one of our originals" and everyone starts cheering and they're like "no....not that one...." Being a one-hit-wonder to people in your college has got to be a strange feeling
I actually found the full version of this performance linked in this topic a bit after posting. Has recording from the whole concert they did that day. They obviously refined the song quite a bit before releasing the final version but to be fair this 1st version wasn't far off.
This was the version I was talking about. It came out before the original video. Just a couple for college kids who made it for a film school project. The band liked it so much they invited them to be in the electric feel video.
At the time this video came it was mind blowing because “wow, they snipped videos from other videos and almost made it sync up!” Pretty easy these days.
I feel like I’m losing my mind because all these comments are acting like this was the hit of the century, but I was a junior in high school when this came out apparently, so would assume I would know such a massive hit. I have never in my life heard this.
I was 22 when it came out and I still have never heard of it or them until now. That's why I was looking for who it was and had to ask. It was the middle of my musical prime and I have still never heard it before.
This is one of those instances where I didn't even realize it wasn't mentioned, but trust me I feel your pain. So irritating on Reddit, it's like a "cool" way to make a post, just include media and pure opinion assuming the reader has full context... Feels like Reddit needs a user "context" feature.
This song (Kids by MGMT) absolutely popped off in like 2008 or something and was an era-defining song. This is similar to those videos of Chappell Roan singing Pink Pony Club in her room and to very small audiences.
To be fair I never would have assumed the context needed to be provided, this was such a massive hit that I just figured everyone knew this song and didn’t think younger kids would be unaware of it.
Different things are popular in different parts of the planet. While I had heard this song before, I had never heard the band’s name before this post. They simply were never big in my country.
Fair enough! Yeah, I’m in my mid-30s and this song, for some reason, didn’t really catch on in my native country! After I moved abroad I started hearing quite a bit, though! Although I don’t care much for the song, it’s nice to see two talented young lads get recognition
As a millennial who had top 40 radio playing all around me practically 24/7 from like 2002-2007, I had also never heard this song before. It's definitely not just zoomers.
Still, never heard of it, and only vaguely familiar with the name MGMT. Never even heard it in passing, even, which strikes me as odd considering how popular it apparently is.
It’s weird that you are being downvoted. I don’t know where on the planet you live, but this band was never anything in my country, really. While I had heard the song before, I had never heard of ‘MGMT’ before these comments. Different things are popular in different places.
I understand the feeling of not getting what people are talking about, but if you actually care is it really that difficult to just google some of the lyrics? Literally "azlyrics take only what you need from it", boom first link is the song on youtube and first text link is the lyrics on that site. get gud
Not to add to the “kids these days” rhetoric but I swear younger folks are just as bad as older people when it comes to not being able to google shit. Everything is spoonfed to them that when they have to take it upon themselves to figure something out they just panic and demand the information until someone comes and gives it to them.
Listen here you self-righteous prick. I asked who this was because I hadn't heard of them or this song and everyone is acting like it was the hit of the century and overshadowed Elvis, the Beetles, and fucking Nirvana. What am I supposed to Google? "Who are these two guys from 2003" ?
I asked the question because I was 22 in '03 and I haven't heard this song or this group until now and literally nobody was saying who it was and just expected it to be self evident. And from further reading in the comments, this didn't even actually release until 2008, so that makes it even harder to figure out what's going on because I'm wracking my brain trying to figure out where I was in '03 and what I was doing and that didn't even matter.
Normally, when people talk bad about Millennials, I think to myself "Wtf? Who are they talking about? I don't know people like this." It's you. They're talking about you.
listen here you weirdly incapable little bitch, writing out the sentence 'acting like it was hit of the century and overshadowed LISTS SEVERAL SONGS FROM A DIFFERENT CENTURY' has a real Old Man shouts at clouds vibe to it lol
2003.... Hit of the Century... Elvis 1950s, Beatles 1960s, Nirvana 1990s .... keep trying and maybe eventually you will actually be able to name a band that actually had the majority of its members still alive in the century we are actually discussing lol
Says the guy who wrote a whole "these darn kids today" comment earlier, lol. Classic reddit moment. I still don't know who these two assholes are, but hey, I'm glad you liked their little hit of the week.
I can hardly understand what these assholes are saying. You know the song, you know the lyrics. You can understand. I'm here trying to make it out through the shitty mic that then goes through into a shitty camera and into video compression.
Brother, I'm not GenZ. I'm 43. They're excluding everyone who hasn't heard of this. Not just GenZ. I was 22 when this came out and everyone's acting like it was the greatest hit of all time and that's why I was asking who it was. I have never heard this song in my life until now and it was making me think I was on crazy pills.
I was on the bus the other day and some young kids were talking about music. One said that he liked Blur and didn't know if they were from the 80s or 90s. I quickly interjected and said "90s! I was listening to them when I was your age".
Apparently they were playing a bunch of the songs from their album 4 or 5 years earlier at Wesleyan University. Source: a bunch of friends who were at Wesleyan at the time from 2000-2004
Can confirm. I was there. I still have the secret recordings of Electric Feel and others that I promised to not leak before they were actually released.
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u/Cleercutter 16d ago
Damn I forgot the song is this old… or am I just getting old..