Songfacts®:

• The first single from American Electro-Pop band Passion Pit's sophomore album, Gosammer, finds singer Michael Angelakos singing of family financial struggles, including an immigrant relative selling flowers outside Penn Station. "It's about very specific family members, the male hierarchy, and how the men in my family have always dealt with money," he explained to MTV News. "I've always been really fond of a lot of my family members and not so fond of others. All these men were very conservative; socially very liberal but for some reason, they all came here for capitalism, and they all ended up kind of being prey to capitalism. And I'm not making any political statements or anything, but it's ironic and it's sad."
• Angelakos was concerned that people might misinterpret the single as a political song with its mentions of lost pensions and "damn taxes." The frontman told MTV News that he doesn't "really don't consider myself a very political person," adding "I really don't like political songs, frankly." He continued: "I didn't want people to read it the wrong way. I was more or less interested in analyzing my own family, and that was my way of talking about myself, because I'm a product of these men; I'm their blood. And that was a new way for me to express something."
• The song's music video was shot in Philadelphia and directed by David Wilson using helicam technology. The clip shows the world from the perspective of a blue ball as it bounces through the city and into the clouds. "It was the desire to echo the seamless rhythm in the song with the camera bounce that drew me to this bespoke helicam capable of creating such a smooth bounce," explained Wilson."Essentially, we were able to achieve moves with the camera that I haven't seen before; the bounce is something that really differentiates this from any helicam video I've seen before," he added. "Making that a reality was a challenge; there's a reason a camera hasn't been bounced via mini helicopter before."
• The song’s commercial success was helped by its inclusion in Taco Bell's Doritos Tacos Locos advertising campaign, which ran concurrently with its release.
• Asked about the song during a Reddit AMA, Angelakos said: "It's just a weird character study that went almost too far, I have no idea. but I like that it's so uncharacteristic of me. Each verse, well, including the bridge, is about a male figure in my family, and the common thread is immense financial and familial pressure, and how money seems to have always ruined everything. you need it, but it's very clearly the corruptive element."