Ace Audio: "Eyes Wide Open" - Gotye

When an artist is only recognized for just one song, it often overshadows a bunch of the artist's other stuff, even if the other stuff are a lot better. This is most commonly seen in the category known as "One-hit wonders", music artists that have one large hit (often one that reaches number one) and just all of a sudden drop off the charts altogether. There are many artists who have just barely escaped the one hit wonder branding like Mike Posner and Jeremih, but those are not the kind of artists I'm talking about. There are also those kinds of artists who you kind of worry will stay a one hit wonder, and for a while, I never had that kind of worry, because a lot of the music I listened to was rock and metal, and when I did listen to something popular, the artist often seemed to have a second or third hit, or was already a one-hit wonder. That was however, until I listened to Gotye, who you might know because of this one little known song called "Somebody That I Used to Know".

You see, I'm not worried about this guy becoming unsuccessful, because he really seems the kind of person who enjoys making music, no I'm worried that "Somebody That I Used to Know" will be the only song he is recognized for in the coming years. Not because it's a bad song, but because it is not his best song. In my opinion his best song is "Eyes Wide Open" from the same album, for multiple reasons I'm going to get into during this review, but let me state this upfront right now, I understand why this wasn't a big pop hit.

Like I said when I reviewed "Royals" a lot of these non-pop pop songs were making the charts and "Somebody That I Used to Know" fits right up there. These kinds of songs are pop enough to appeal to mass audiences, but not pop enough to have much staying power on the charts. "Eyes Wide Open" may have been too weird for the charts, in fact it may have even been a victim of being too rock for the pop charts and too pop for the rock charts.

But that doesn't mean the song itself is bad, in fact quite the contrary. As much as I understand why this wasn't popular, it doesn't mean I don't think it should be popular. So why is this better than "Somebody That I Used to Know"?

Well for starters, those instrumentals. God damn those instrumentals are amazing. Those drum beats set the perfect beat and rhythm to the song and the bass really compliments it. but what really steals the show is that slide guitar which really does give the song a very desolate, hopeless sound to it all.

That also isn't a complaint as this song is actually about an apocalypse, this is highly complimented by not only the instrumentals but also the lyrics. This song may have my favourite lyrics in any song, I won't spoil them for new listeners, but I will say that my favourite lines really hit hard, which the best lyrics should do.

Gotye may stay in the one-hit wonder world that the pop scene pushes plenty of artists into. However, I think it would be a massive shame if we at least didn't listen to more of his music. He is a talented musician and has made some really good songs from this to other stuff like "Bronte".

I'm the Entity of Darkness and always give things a chance, you may like it more than you think.