Long Hair and a Broken Heart
How the song “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards” pushed Tame Impala forward.
Tame Impala is a one-man band. On stage, frontman Kevin Parker is assisted by two Australian musicians, Jay Watson and Dominic Simper, but Parker writes, records, produces, and pall of the band's music. Parker is known for his technical precision and ability to pull fans’ emotions with ambiguous lyrics and with blissful beats.
In 2012 Tame Impala released Lonerism, which featured the hit song “Feels like we only go backwards” (APRA’s Song of the Year). The Lonerism album brought many new fans to Tame Impala and expanded Parker’s influence amongst modern artists, including Kendrick Lamar, a 12-time Grammy winner.
On the movie Divergent, Lamar and Parker collaborated to make the song “Backwards”. This song was a combination of Parker’s “Feels like we only go backwards” and Lamar's lyrical imagery.
And we’ll be screamin’ out no rules, no rules
Feel the energy we go through, I told you
Then, in 2014, A$AP Rocky featured Tame Impala with the release of “Unicorn,” which featured a reverbed and slowed chorus of the song. This same year Tyler the Creator fell in love with Tame Impala, posting all over Twitter about his new obsession. Tyler and Frank Ocean released a song the next year shouting out their love for Tame Impala…
Pop some tame impala, your man got a lame impala, and I'm sharing Slurpees, and you ain't even begin to…
I first listened to Tame Impala this summer with my brothers, cousins, and I circled around a speaker listening to the album Currents, Parker’s most famous album. Released in 2015 the album became the best charting album from Australia and eventually making the Rolling Stone’s top 500 albums. Currents led me to Lonerism and “Feels like we only go backwards.”
The song has a very catchy chorus with sad, relatable lyrics. Parker discusses his love for his ex and how he’s stuck in a loop of loving her. Parker pulls the listener in at the beginning of the song by having the beat drop.
It feels like I only go backwards, baby
Every part of me says, “Go ahead”
I got my hopes up again, oh no, not again
Feels like we only go backwards, darling
Here, Parker tells his listeners how his body tells him to go after the girl, but he knows that getting his hopes up for her is only going to lead to heartbreak. Parker is deeply in love and anything she says only makes him love her more.
I know that you think you sound silly when you call my name
But I hear it inside my head all day
When I realise I’m just holding on to the hope that maybe
Your feelings don’t show
Parker explains to her that although she may feel silly or weird when calling his name, he has been thinking about her all day. Parker has been thinking about her calling his name. Although Parker is so in love with this girl, he notices how his hope that she feels the same way slowly dies as she doesn't show those same feelings back.
The seed of all this indecision isn’t me, oh no
’Cause I decided long ago
But that’s the way it seems to go
When trying so hard to get to something real, it feels
Parker is tired of the indecision from this girl exclaiming how he had decided long ago to leave her. He had decided that she was not right for him but he can’t seem to shake the feelings he has.
To top off the uniqueness and intrigue of Kevin Parker’s work, the music video for “Feels like we only go backwards” was made by the producers of Don’t hug me I'm scared, a youtube series of unusual and unsettling videos. Parker and the producers worked together to create a psychedelic trippy video zooming out of heads with different patterns running through them.
This constant movement in the video of going nowhere but still trying to move forwards is exactly what Parker wants the audience to feel. He wants the listeners to understand his feeling of hopelessness, stuck in a loop of love just as the audience of the music video is stuck in a loop going backwards. Parker was able to express his feelings, speaking to many of his loyal listeners. This idea of expressing his true feelings has brought him lots of fans looking for a song that moves them backwards and forwards.
