Why pumped up kicks was written

Foster told Rolling Stone that he wanted to 'bring awareness' to the issue of gun violence amongst young people, as well as to 'get inside the head of an isolated, psychotic kid'.

This is clearly an issue that is close to the hearts of the whole band, and bass player Cubbie Fink explained to CNN how his cousin survived the tragic Columbine High School massacre in Fink told CNN : "She [his cousin] was actually in the library when everything went down, so I actually flew out to be with her the day after it happened and experienced the trauma surrounding it and saw how affected she was by it.

All rights reserved. Billboard is celebrating the s with essays on the songs that we feel most define the decade that was -- the songs that both shaped and reflected the music and culture of the period -- with help telling their stories from some of the artists, behind-the-scenes collaborators and industry insiders involved.

It was a catchy crossover hit that catered to multiple genre formats, and it helped usher in a new era of commercially successful indie-leaning pop music. Plus, it turned frontman Mark Foster from a L. So it may be surprising that, when reflecting on the song eight years after it reached No.

So the song was written from the perspective of Robert, a high schooler with plans to go through with a school shooting. Can you share a little about how you wrote the song and where that idea came from? Well, I'll stop you in the question and say the school shooting part of it was never spoken about in the song.

I think people filled in the blanks that it was about a school shooting, but I never say anything about a school in the song. It's really more about this person's psyche. Obviously the song is speaking about violent things, but it is a misconception that it's about a school shooting. I mean, it's not a big point that you have to hit home, I just want to point that out. No, I wasn't surprised at all.

It's been interesting to watch the lifespan of that song. The fact that it took off in the first place was something that I never predicted would happen. There were other songs that I'd written before that -- that I would get excited about and say people are going to connect with and like -- and nothing happens.

And then this song What's interesting about it to me was, topically, [the song] struck a chord and resonated with people, which is why the song became what it did. But it took people a while to really let the lyrics get into their bones, and I think that once the lyrics got under their skin, it was a bit of a slap in the face.

And I think some people were embarrassed that they didn't realize it in the beginning -- that they had been dancing to it. But I also want to say that 10 years ago when I wrote it, it was a warning. That's where it was coming from for me. What moves me is culture. I'm watching culture and responding to it. I remember that week [that I wrote the song], there was some shooting that happened, and it really bothered me, because I recognized that it was going to continue to get worse.

And that nothing was going to change. And then that song popped out. I don't remember which one but I can tell you I wrote the song in January It wasn't necessarily reacting to the shooting itself, it was reacting to the idea, realizing that this isn't going to change and that this is going to get so bad. It was like peeling back time and looking into the future and being like, "This is going to get so bad before anything changes that a lot of people are going to die and this is going to be a really dark period of American history.

Did I write it specifically to try to warn the public? No, I didn't think anybody was ever going to hear the song. I was a starving artist, I didn't have an audience.

I never in a million years thought that it was going to become a global phenomenon. Walk me through what it was like in the studio recording the song. I saw that you did nearly everything on it -- you wrote it, produced it, engineered it, and played all the instruments, even the whistling and the clapping. How did you make the decision to make the melody upbeat and cheery?

Well it's funny, I was about to leave the studio that day because I was across town in L. I don't for a moment fear that my kids or yours are one ill-considered pop song away from going bad, but I'd just rather not have their environment include a school shooting treated with all the gravity of bubble-gum pop — with whistling!

From nowhere, they've gone to playing Lollapalooza this summer. They're on a mostly sold-out tour right now, scheduled to hit Chicago's Riviera Theatre Wednesday night.

And the tune has been top 10 on the Billboard Hot chart since Aug. It's a nice story, almost. Mark Foster, the group's Cleveland-bred frontman, did not respond to an e-mail request to address some of the questions raised by the song.

It's illuminating a situation but from an interesting point of view," Foster added. The Grammy-nominated musician reflected on whether artists have a responsibility to speak out during trying times ahead of the band's headlining performance at the "All Things Go" music festival last month.

CNN: There's been no shortage of bad news in the world. While writing songs for your latest album, "Sacred Hearts Club," has the political climate influenced your music or have you been able to compartmentalize? Mark Foster: How the Vegas shooting changed us FOSTER: I would wake up, I'd read the news in the morning and I would get a knot in my stomach because it felt like there would be a tragedy that happened somewhere in the world, there would be a shooting somewhere, there would be a bombing somewhere Walking into the studio making "Scared Hearts Club" I felt like it was important for us as artists to write a joyful record, but using joy as a weapon because joy is the best weapon against oppression, it's the best weapon against depression.