Foster The People
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5 Best Foster The People Songs
Foster The People have mastered the art of the perfect pop song. These are their five best.
Written by Richard S. Chang
3 min readPublished on
When Foster The People revealed late Monday the details of their forthcoming second album, 'Supermodel,' out March 18 on Columbia, my first thought was: Could Mark Foster have any magic left?
With 'Torches,' the band's debut album, Foster loaded up with 10 incessantly catchy pop songs, foreshadowed by the band's first single, 'Pumped Up Kicks,' which I first heard on a car radio in the middle of the night during a road trip from New York City to Boston.
Why am I telling you this? Because 'Pumped Up Kicks' is the type of song that makes you remember where you were when you first heard it. And it wasn't even the best song on 'Torches.'
So now, in anticipation of 'Supermodel,' and the promise of more hooks, more perfectly crafted pop arrangements, more obscurely grim lyrics, here are Foster The People's five best songs.

5. 'Pumped Up Kicks'

One of the most infectious choruses ever written about teenage mental illness.

4. 'Helena Beat'

There have been songs written about heroin addiction before, and I'm sure there have been songs written about heroin addiction with an equally catchy chorus. I just can't think of any of them right now.

3. 'Call It What You Want'

You like disco? You like funk? You like disco-funk? Of course you do. We all like disco-funk. But Foster The People's version of piano-vamp booty-grooving comes with a healthy serving of lyrical meaning. “I’m in the crossfire, dodging bullets from your expectancies,” Foster sings. It's got something to do with avoiding the trappings of judgment and categorization. It's very liberating, actually, and much more so with the anthemic chorus.

2. 'Don't Stop (Color On The Walls)'

About 'Don't Stop,' Mark Foster said in an interview with Metro, "It’s about what a four-year-old would do if they ran the world." In the same interview he spoke about his out-of-body experiences. "I experimented with astral projection around five years ago, which is when you leave your body. It’s a trip. I don’t do it any more – it freaked me out. I’d just float around and popped up in locations and didn’t know how to control my spirit in those environments." In some ways that's what listening to 'Don't Stop' feels like.

1. 'Waste'

A love song. Finally. But because it's a love song written by Mark Foster, it's called 'Waste,' as in "And every day that you want to waste, that you want to waste, you can... I'll help you see it through cause I just really want to be with you." Aww.
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