Ok—so I rarely get obsessed with songs and videos…but there is one video that i have become totally enamored with. It is a video by an Australian musician- Wally De Backer- stage name: Gotye. He teemed up with Australian pop artist Kimbra for this song “Someone I Used To Know.”

It won for the best pop song of the year for the ARIA 2011 awards (Australian Record Industry Association) so everyone in Australia knows it while a very small population over here in the states are starting to get on board it’s awesomeness.

I was first introduced to this song by my husband. He gave me his phone while I was in the bathroom and had no where to go so I just watched. At first and wasn’t too impressed and brushed it off. But later in the day the video was haunting me and I was drawn back to it. I watched it again and was just mesmerized by the concept of the video and the lyrics and the connection of the two people telling this story. It is a relatively short song but for some reason I couldn’t get enough. After watching this beautiful painted man with the lovely large mouth sing to me with this emotion and frustration I was not only in love with him- but also every note, sound, word, and even the tiniest of facial expressions or movement in the video. I was OBSESSED. I literally watched this video about 100 times during my day off. Needless to say my husband was totally annoyed by it.

Anyway- last week I was asked to write a few blogs a month about music that inspires me and so I thought this would be a good choice. Inspired or obsessed, you ask? Either way it triggered something in me that sparked creative flow. Hopefully it will do the same for you. Watch it. Study it. You may think it’s weird. You may think it’s brilliant. You may not think anything at all. But you have to give credit to the video concept and the making of this video. I bet they had to stand there naked for a LONG LONG TIME (it took 7 hours per person actually)- HA, I SAID NAKED- SO NOW I BET YOU ARE GOING TO WATCH EVERY MINUTE OF IT!

Using both stop motion and live action photography resulted in an amazing video, however did create “…practical challenges thrown up by the extremely ambitious concept itself,” said the director Natalie Pincus.

In an interview she shared that, “The project brought together various professionals across several different media. I had to facilitate the collaboration of various 2D artists – a graphic artist’s work painted as a mural by a different scenic artist whose own work was to blend with a body painter’s paintings across two performers.”

To read all of the interview, which I suggest that you do because it is awesome go to Music Video Theory.

Pretty much everywhere that had a place to write a comment, I found that people all have the same feedback about how this video made them feel- and it is on target with how it made me feel as well:

“…Obviously the first time I heard the song I was stirred up deeply inside. Then after learning so much about it, every time I hear it I start to well up… Ugh…. it’s almost too intense of a song to experience. I try to listen to it with other people because that seems to quell the emotions.” -Sunny (misc blogger).

“Haunting and with so much emotion, yet funky with a different sound than I’ve heard in a long while. I heard this song on the radio on my way in to work and couldn’t get it out of my head all day – in a good way. The video is really cool as well. Gorgeous harmony in the end of the two of them.”- Catherine (misc blogger)

“I’ve been watching this video on an ongoing loop for several hours and seriously can not get enough of it. His body language when she is singing into his ears, the skin and paint. I am addicted, I just can’t stop watching! <3 it!” - hattifinatte (misc blogger)

There are both good and bad comments about this video mostly touching on how Wally’s voice is very reminiscent of  Peter Gabriel and Sting-(you can definitely hear them both in his voice), comparing their Australian Kimbra our American Katy Perry, and last but not least, there are tons of comments referring to the size of Gotye’s mouth (see picture above) and how it is too distracting (for me it is distracting- in a really good way because I am in love with his really big mouth if you haven’t already read that earlier in this post).

Check it out for yourself and then leave your feedback!