Gotye and the Quiet One

While everyone was busy memorizing the chorus of "Somebody That I Used to Know," Gotye had already moved somewhere quieter. "Save Me," sitting in the middle of Making Mirrors, doesn’t announce itself—it just starts, soft and a little desperate, Wally De Backer doing that thing he does where he sounds like he’s collapsing inward while the production holds everything very still. The song is about needing rescue and suspecting it won’t come, or maybe not wanting it as much as you thought you did. It lives in that uncomfortable space between longing and resignation that the album keeps returning to, and it’s one of the more honest things he put on that record.