The next time Mark Foster has a chance to skip out of his work
writing songs to go to the beach, don't be surprised if he decides to
stay inside and write.
Another time he chose work over play, things worked out pretty well for Foster and his band, Foster the People.
"I really didn't have anything to do that day," Foster recalled in an
early June phone interview. "I was standing there in the studio, and
this thought came in my mind like, 'I'm going to write a song,' which I
did all the time. I just kind of built a song from the ground up …and
then I was like, 'I don't feel like writing. I don't want to write a
song.' I was a block away from the beach, and it was a beautiful day. I
kind of just wanted to just be lazy and go hang out at the beach or
whatever. But I just forced myself to write a song. I was like, 'Nope, I
want to write a song.' By that time the next day, the song was
finished."
It wasn't just any song he finished. It was "Pumped Up Kicks," the
multiformat hit song that propelled Foster the People's debut CD,
"Torches," toward platinum-selling success and a level of popularity
that is allowing the group this summer to headline outdoor
amphitheaters.
Beyond its success, Foster feels that he learned an important songwriting lesson from "Pumped Up Kicks."
"I've heard a lot of other artists talk about this as well, like,
'I'm not inspired right now. I've got writer's block. I'm just not
really feeling anything,'" Foster said. "And I've felt that way, too,
just not being inspired and wanting to wait for inspiration to come
before I wrote. But I wasn't inspired when I wrote 'Pumped Up Kicks,'
and that's what came out. So … it just solidified the notion that
perspiration is more powerful than inspiration."
Foster knows a thing or two about working to carve out a path in
music. In fact, it took him some seven years before he formed Foster the
People with drummer Mark Pontius (bassist Cubbie Fink completed the
lineup later) and wrote "Pumped Up Kicks" over the space of that single
day.
After finishing "Pumped Up Kicks," Foster posted the song as a free
download, and it went viral. Around the same time, Foster the People
landed a slot at the South By Southwest Music Festival in Austin in
March 2010.
Soon the buzz was on. By summer of 2010, Foster the People had signed
to Startime International, part of the Columbia Records group of
labels.
The group debuted with a self-titled EP featuring "Pumped Up Kicks"
in January 2011. This allowed the song to get early radio play and
placement on several high-profile television shows.
By the time "Torches" arrived in May, "Pumped Up Kicks" had already
cracked Billboard magazine's Hot 100 singles chart and paved the way for
"Torches" to debut at No. 8 on Billboard's album chart. By July,
"Pumped Up Kicks" was crossing over to Adult Top 40 and Mainstream Top
40 and on its way to No. 3 on the Hot 100 chart.
The song's popularity is easy to understand. Fueled by a thumping
beat, a hooky bass line and a sing-along-worthy chorus, it's an
irresistible slice of synthy dance pop. The rest of "Torches" is solid
as well, as on songs like "Call It What You Want," "Don't Stop (Color On
The Walls) and "Warrant," Foster the People fashion a sound that deftly
blends rock, synthy pop and dance-inducing rhythms.
The song's success, though, also created a challenge -- to establish Foster the People as more than a one-hit wonder.
"I really wanted to make sure that people knew we were more than 'Pumped Up Kicks' and that it wasn't a fluke," Foster said.
The group got the follow-up hit it wanted with "Don't Stop (Color On
the Walls)," which went top 10 on several rock charts. And now the
latest single, "Houdini," has cracked the top 40 on the latest
Billboard's Alternative Songs chart.
The summer tour should help the band maintain its momentum heading
into work this fall on its second album. The tour will be Foster the
People's biggest production to date.
"For this tour, we wanted to bring the 'Torches' artwork to life,
bring the characters to life and kind of bring that whole world, make
that whole world real," Foster said. "So we've got a fair amount of
video, animation in the same style of that. We've got a backdrop that's
kind of a town in the same art as the characters, basically like where
the characters live, behind us. Then there are inflatables that blow up
throughout the show that are different characters from the album art.
"I've not seen anything like it before," he said. "And then there are
bubbles and confetti and all that stuff, too, which never really gets
old."
