Gotye On Why His Dream Run Almost Didn't Happen

Multi-award winning and worlwide chart-topping artist Gotye had “a lot of doubts” that his 2011 monster album Making Mirrors would achieve any success.

In a recent interview, the Belgium born singer-songwriter confessed he was not confident the record would make any impact because of the pressure he put on himself to finish it.

“I actually had a lot of doubts because it was quite a struggle to get it to sound the way I wanted it to,” he admitted. “It took a lot longer to write the material and finish mixing it than I hoped – probably a year longer than I planned to spend on it – so there were times where I felt a bit like I'd missed my own subconscious deadlines and somehow as a result that made me a bit on edge about it. I was just feeling a bit like people wouldn't respond to the material positively and like this could really fall flat on its arse.”

One thing Gotye was a lot surer of was the fact that his global phenomenon hit Somebody That I Used To Know was a strong choice for a single.

“It was the last song that was finished for the album and it did take five to six months almost of holding the whole record up to finish the song, so I guess that was partly because I had an inkling that it would be one of the strongest songs on the record. Up to then I'd sort of pencilled other songs in as singles but I also felt a bit like some of the strongest songs that I had finished on the record were actually some of the least single-worthy songs. But from the second I played Somebody to my managers and to a friend and my folks, when I'd just demoed the female part myself and even before I'd finished the arrangement of the second chorus, almost everybody seemed to think there was something quite engaging about that track so I had a pretty strong feeling already that it was worth waiting to finish. I don't know, I just had a belief that it was a good single choice, that it was just idiosyncratic enough to be not an obvious single but that it did work as a pop song.”

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