Released: 2007
Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden as legend – a bit of their own, a bit of other people’s – would have it wrote their breakthrough number Kids as a joke whilst still at college. They were trying to prove a theory which many such as the KLF had already made explicit, that the simplicity of the human mind can be used as a trackway to game our perceptions of good or bad art, and that this conceit is a highly repeatable formula.
You didn’t really need a degree to understand that, I mean, duh, pop music has traversed exactly that same trip round the cortex for the last seventy years. But we indulged them, because Kids was a great song and it was followed by their debut album Oracular Spectacular, which was more than indulged by everyone, from Macca to Jay-Z – smart it seemed was sexy, all we had to do was let it in again.
Time to Pretend had originally appeared two years earlier, but wouldn’t be denied a second time, it’s reedy synth break and junior-Bowie vocals giving the impression of an acid trip taking place in the high school where they set The Breakfast Club. All you needed to make it better it seemed was Molly Ringwald lecturing you about the evils of drugs whilst a herd of pink antelopes grazed by the water cooler. That’s pop you see, simple when you know how to make it, and simple when you how to take it.
The Voice Of Unreason 