Your Life is a Lie
by MGMT

Album: MGMT (2013)
Play Video

Songfacts®:

  • The second single released from MGMT's eponymous third album is a short, sharp slice of surrealism. Vocalist Andrew VanWyngarden told Relix magazine that he wrote the song, "while tripping hard on acid by a fire."
  • MGMT premiered the song live during their concert at Portland, Maine's State Theatre on April 30, 2013.
  • The song's music video finds MGMT again working with Tom Kuntz, who was director of the band's 2010 mini-epic widescreen clip for "Congratulations." Kuntz pairs the band with an assortment of colorful characters, including skeletons singing around a piano, talking dolphins and Happy Days actor Henry Winkler.
  • On the face of it, some of the lyrics could be read as a rebuttal to MGMT's fair-weather fans who ditched the duo after their commercially successful Oracular Spectacular album:

    "Count your friends on your hands
    Now look again, they're not your friends."

    VanWyngarden said in an interview this interpretation would be missing the point: "It's not supposed to be directed at our fans," he said. "It's more for people to use and direct towards whoever they want, whoever they feel like is holding them down."

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