Are You What You Want to Be

Album: Supermodel (2014)
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Songfacts®:

  • Mark Foster's lyrics for the Supermodel album were borne of what he called, "asking a lot of questions internally and trying to process the world around me." On this Afrobeat grooved song he asks:

    "Is this the life you've been waiting for?
    Hoping that you be where you want with a little more."

    Foster admitted to Q magazine: "I've got way more questions and answers."
  • The West African-inspired beat was inspired by The Clash's Sandinista! album. Mark Foster told WXRT DJ Marty Lennartz "We'd been listening to Sandinista! a lot as kind of the music that got us ready to go on stage at the end of touring, so I think that listening to how The Clash was using percussion and we'd also been listening to some West African music and just percussively, that was something we wanted to play with some different rhythms and also use some different sounds that weren't typically used in Western music."
  • This song leans heavily on sounds Mark Foster heard while in Morocco. After he'd finished touring Torches, the frontman took some time off to travel alone. He told WXRT DJ Marty Lennartz: "With my iPhone, I would just record things all over the world. Even on the last year of touring Torches, I would sample things."

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