For telling a story of a boy planning a violent school shooting, the song has been shelved in respect of the Connecticut school shooting.
- Dec 20, 2012
AceShowbiz - Ke$ha's "Die Young" is not the only song pulled out from the airwaves. Foster the People's "Pumped Up Kicks" is also yanked from the playlist of Los Angeles radio station KIIS-FM following the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
"Pumped Up Kicks" happens to contain lyrics which will be inappropriate in the current situation. Some of the lines said, "He found a six-shooter gun in his dad's closet, with the box of fun things�he's coming for you, yeah he's coming for you" and "All the other kids with the pumped up kicks, you better run, better run, faster than my bullet."
Foster the People's frontman Ben Foster previously said in an interview with Spinner U.K. about the dark nature of the song. " 'Pumped Up Kicks' is about a kid that basically is losing his mind and is plotting revenge," Foster said. "He's an outcast. I feel like the youth in our culture are becoming more and more isolated. It's kind of an epidemic. Instead of writing about victims and some tragedy, I wanted to get into the killer's mind, like Truman Capote did in In Cold Blood."
On December 14, 20-year-old Adam Peter Lanza fatally shot twenty children and six adults at the school after killing his mother at home. Investigation on Lanza's motive is still going on and police said it could take months.
Radio stations have indeed made adjustments to show respect to the victims' family. "We're letting people grieve," WDAQ Danbury, Conn., program director/morning host Rich Minor told Billboard. "It's just me in mornings and Nate Mumford in afternoons during the week, so, on Friday, we were just trying to get information out. Since then, we're airing more calls. We've suspended all uptempo music beds under our talk breaks, as well as giveaways and gossip for now."
