Best Friend

Album: Supermodel (2014)
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Songfacts®:

  • This funked-up pop jam finds Mark Foster singing: "When your best friend's all strung out, you do everything you can 'cause you're never gonna let it get him down." The Foster the People frontman told Q magazine that the line is not about drugs, but about his difficulty coming up with the lyric. "It's like your creative spirit, your best friend that you rely on is out of action," he said.
  • Mark Foster told Jam! Music the story of the song: "That lyric and that vocal melody came to me before any of the music or anything else, which usually doesn't happen that way," he said. "And I wrote the song around that."

    "And so that first verse (starts singing), 'When your best friend's all strung out,' I heard that in my head like a children's choir singing that lyric with that melody," he continued. "I think, in some ways, writing like a pop song to tackle subject matter that's hard to talk about is defiant in nature, that it's actually a rebellion against the subject matter. To be able to smile in the face of adversity."
  • The video tells a horror story of a pill-popping cannibal model. The clip reflects the senselessness of those who try to escape life through drugs and delusion. "It's a commentary on the modeling industry and the fashion industry and the pressures women feel and girls feel every day," said Mark Foster to MTV News. "It's a playful take on that; it's not too heavy handed."

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