A quick post about a unique pop song dedicated to an electric organ.
A Lowrey C500 Celebration, which is a cousin to the Cotillion D575 (from Wikipedia)
In 2011, the Australian-Belgian musician Gotye released his third album Making Mirrors and yielded himself his only hit song, “Somebody I Used to Know.” While the song still holds up pretty well, the album overall should’ve gained more traction than it did. It’s a smart pop album that pulses through each song, modelled similarly to the song cycle albums found during the 1970s where all tracks are edited to flow into one another as if they’re supposed to be heard as a whole and not just as singles. A rough narrative forms when you move from “Easy Way Out” into “Somebody I Used to Know” then into “Eyes Wide Open” and “Smoke and Mirrors,” at least for the first half. As the album goes on, it becomes clearer that this was meant to be a collection of tracks but the music’s still solid. This is primarily due to Gotye’s army of synthesizers, especially the one he dedicates an entire song to: the Lowrey Cotillion organ.
If you haven’t listened to it before, take a few minutes to check out “State of the Art” – it’s one of the weirdest and nerdiest pop songs ever. It’s also been a constant fixture on my Spotify playlists since I first heard it back in 2013.
When you notice the lyrics, it’s a strange story about a family that buys this organ, throws out their TV, and become obsessed with playing it all the time like it’s a video game system. Before the song finishes, it turns into both an ad and a demo of what the Cotillion does with its sound effects (kind of like a shorter, goofier version of Benjamin Britten’s The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra). To quote Gotye from an NPR interview given in 2012:
GOTYE: I didn't want it to sort of sound robotic. I wanted it to sound like a peculiar sort of human but not human character.
SULLIVAN: So was that the inspiration behind wanting to do it this way, because there's a lyric in the song that says: These amazing simulations end up sounding even better than the real thing. I mean, was that facetious?
GOTYE: No. I mean, the song is like this - well, on the one hand, it's like a love song to an electronic organ that sits in my land room...
SULLIVAN: OK.
GOTYE: ...and talking to it - given to me, secondhand purchase by my parents. So, yeah, on some level, the song is kind of just like a love song to a piece of technology. But then when the song and the lyrics sort of became about that organ, I realized, I think, at some stage, it became a little bit like a reflection on the nature of how people can relate to inanimate objects and basic technology into the kind of bold promise that technology at certain periods seems to give us, of, you know, this possible future, this bright future, and especially, I think, I mean, about how that promise of that future can very quickly become very quaint and almost impossible for a future generation to understand because technology dates so quickly. So on some level, maybe the weird voice is kind of like I imagine maybe it's myself in 20, 30 years' time, or maybe it's really like a middle-age organ enthusiast who is trying pretty hard but can't really convince his wife or his kids that these amazing simulations of violins and vibrato trumpets are interesting.
After Making Mirrors gave him his one hit, we haven’t really heard much from Gotye for over a decade now other than apparently contributing to The Great Gatsby soundtrack and an album dedicated to synth pioneer Jean-Jacques Perrey. Based on what I’ve read, he didn’t seem to want fame or fortune and just wanted to geek out on being a musician for the pure love of it. I think Cottor Koopman at the post calvin summed it up better in 2021:
After “Somebody” dies down, De Backer indeed dips. “Gotye” goes on hiatus. He later admits to forgoing ads on the “Somebody” music video, missing out on millions of dollars. He doesn’t seem interested in staying famous, or even attempting a follow-up. After winning three Grammys, he begins playing drums in the back of a band with some friends. De Backer still produces music and collaborates quietly. Investigating his favorite sounds keeps leading him to one rare, early electronic instrument called the Ondioline, a bit unlike anything before or since. He acquires several antique models. He befriends an old Swiss composer named Jean-Jacques Perrey, the original promoter and foremost virtuoso of the instrument, who nonetheless has hardly any trace of recordings with it. In the last years of Perrey’s life, De Backer decides to completely devote his musical energy to preserving the legacy of both the composer and the synonymous rare instrument. [Describes the Ondioline and how it works.] …All of this is to say—no wonder this is where De Backer ended up. Relistening to the 2012 pop artifact of “Somebody That I Used To Know,” the lineage feels so clear. And look how much fun he’s having!