Top 50 2011: Call It What You Want

Don’t judge a song by its title, even if its title is something dumb and hipster-y like “Pumped Up Kicks“.

I resisted checking out Foster the People simply because of the for the majority of the year and didn’t find out how awesome their album Torches was until they performed on SNL.  The entire album has this wonderful energy, but “Call It What You Want” in particular captures it so well.  Mark Foster’s voice isn’t hidden behind a filter, and the melodies are hooky and contagious.  There’s a bunch of other winners on the album – “Houdini” and “Waste” come to mind immediately.  So here’s to maybe not being quite so judgemental the next time a song with a dumb name gets popular.  It might be getting popular for a reason.

Also, you have to love a video that goes back to the old tendency to cram as many interesting visuals into 4 minutes than focusing on some sort of real plot.