What Happened To Gotye?
Many musicians from the 2010s just disappeared after a hit or two. There was LMFAO known for their club banger, Party Rock Anthem; Gym Class Heroes frontman Travie McCoy known for his hit, Billionaire featuring Bruno Mars; and Gotye who gave us the ultimate heartbreak anthem, Somebody That I Used to Know. After the success of his single, Gotye just went off the radar and seemingly never made music again. Here's what really happened to the Australian singer.
Did Gotye Steal 'Somebody That I Used To Know'?
These days, many artists are getting sued for copyright issues. But Gotye was already careful with these things back in 2011. He paid proper credit to Luiz Bonfa whose track Seville was heavily sampled for Somebody That I Used To Know. 50% of the hit's royalties go to Bonfa's estate. "There's never been lawsuits," Gotye told news.com.au in 2013. "There was a moment where I could have considered going to court, but I didn't want to spend that time of my life doing that. The incredible work that my managers did protect me from very far-reaching requests for percentages of my songwriting. In the end, I decided it made more sense to focus on creative things and not get hung up on money and lawyers and courts. You don't want to be in places that drain your energy."
The singer never even earned a cent from his YouTube channel. His song's official music video has earned over 1.8 billion views in the last decade. In 2013, his ad revenue was already worth millions. "I'm not interested in selling my music," Gotye said of not collecting his YouTube royalties. "That's the reason I don't put ads on my YouTube channel, which seems strange to people in today's climate, but that is a decision you can make. I'm like that with all my music. I generally never want to sync my music for products."
"Ads are calling for our attention anywhere we turn in the world. If you can do something you care about and that other people care about and keep it out that world that feels like it's all about 'hey buy this stuff' then that's a good thing," he continued, adding that he has his own "rules" for monetizing his music. "I don't mind syncing my music with creative projects like TV or film. I've got my own set of rules I made, if a student film wants to use my film I say yes across the board, there's no money involved. If someone wants to use it commercially I look at what the budget is and the creativity of the project."
Why Didn't Gotye Make More Music?
In 2014, Gotye announced in a newsletter that he'd no longer make music under his stage name. "There will be no new Gotye music. Wait, maybe there will be. I'm not entirely sure right now. There are many contingencies," he said in the statement. "One of those is the continued human capacity for sound perception. If the world gets noisier at the present rate, and instances of early-onset deafness rise correspondingly, and I release my magnus opus in a format that requires the generation and amplification of sound waves via some form of audio reproduction technology in order to be perceptible, will anybody hear this work?"
After that, he kept making music as a member of the Australian band, The Basics which was formed in 2002. They've released two albums, The Age of Entitlement (2015) and B.A.S.I.C (2019). In 2016, he still did a few collaborations as Gotye. He was featured in electronic musician Bibio's track, The Way You Talk, as well as Martin Johnson's debut single, The Outfield. He could have done more, but as he previously said, he's not crazy about making so much money off his craft.
Where Is Gotye Now?
Gotye is still making music these days. He may have gone off the big music charts but he's still very much on that musical path. He's now known for his contribution to preserving the discography of electronic music pioneer, Jean-Jacques Perrey, following his passing in 2016. In the last years, Gotye has been focused on mastering the 1941 invented instrument, Ondioline which was fundamental in Perrey's work. "It took five years of active searching before I got one," the artist said of getting the instrument in 2017. "The inventor Georges Jenny only made about 700 of them but there's nowhere near that many left in the world and even when you do find them, they're usually not in working order."
"You can dial in an incredibly wide range of sounds on the Ondioline," he continued, "and the unique mechanics for playing it allows you to create sounds very sensitively and with a musical deftness I just feel isn't present on most other electronic instruments from the '40s — or decades since". After years of close friendship with Perrey, Gotye released the album, Jacques Perrey Et Son Ondioline in May of 2017. He even took a six-piece orchestra called The Ondioline Orchestra for a live performance of Perrey's music.
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