Gotye Steals Bibio's Thunder As Featured Guest On New Single

For British musician Bibio, snagging Gotye as a guest artist on new single The Way You Talk is probably something of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the track has been afforded a buoyed, broadened potential as a result of its affiliation with the Somebody That I Used To Know hitmaker; on the other, his presence seems to be all anyone wants to talk about.

You can hardly blame them, especially down here in the antipodes. Wally De Backer is, after all, a fiercely defended national treasure, so a natural level of excitement should be expected from local enthusiasts. However, despite the man's prominent presence at the front and centre of the track, it's first and foremost a Bibio composition, and this one in particular has been quite the labour of love.

"A few years ago I had been playing around with this chord sequence that I came up with when playing my Wurlitzer electric piano," Bibio said in a statement about the new song. "I became quite addicted to the sequence and slowly developed it over time. As it got more fleshed out and more nuanced, I started to hear potential in it as the foundation of a song.

"The line 'But there's something about the way you talk' just came out one day while I was playing the piano. I played around with the context of that line and added more lyrics bit by bit, omitting some along the way. The emotional nature of the track and the way I played the piano part seemed to lend itself to an '80s ballad type sound, something I have a bit of a soft spot for."

According to the Brit musician, with a more-developed idea of what he was angling for in the song, the idea of asking Gotye "specifically came to mind".

"I just imagined his voice working with the vibe of the track," Bibio said. "I contacted him and he was keen to get involved, so I sent him the lyrics, instrumental and my vocal demo, and he sent back his vocal parts, not just copying my vocals exactly, he added his own thing, his own nuances, which I loved instantly."

The track is taken from Bibio's forthcoming album A Mineral Love, due for release on 1 April via Inertia. Pre-orders are available now.

Give The Way You Talk a spin below.