It was 2007. Neon headbands were everywhere. The internet was still a place you "visited" rather than lived in. Suddenly, a synth line—crunchy, distorted, and weirdly anthemic—started bleeding out of MacBook speakers and gritty club PAs. That was the arrival of MGMT Time to Pretend, and honestly, pop music hasn't really been the same since.
Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser didn't set out to write a manifesto. They were just two kids from Wesleyan University messing around with the tropes of rock stardom. They were mocking the cliché. The "models for wives" and the "choking on vomit" lines were supposed to be a joke. Irony is a funny thing, though. The world didn't take it as a joke; it took it as an invitation.
The Weird Origins of MGMT Time to Pretend
Most people don't realize that the version of the song we all know wasn't the first one. It originally appeared on their 2005 Time to Pretend EP. It was rawer then. It sounded like it was recorded in a dorm room because, well, it basically was. When they signed to Columbia Records and linked up with producer Dave Fridmann—the guy known for the massive, psychedelic walls of sound on The Flaming Lips’ The Soft Bulletin—the song transformed.
Fridmann pushed the analog synths to the breaking point. If you listen closely to the lead hook, it sounds like it’s vibrating apart. That’s intentional. It captures that specific feeling of being young and feeling like everything is both infinitely possible and totally doomed.
It’s a song about a choice. You can stay in the "elegant slum" or you can go out and get "smothered by the silver screen." For a bunch of twenty-somethings in the late 2000s, that resonated. We were the last generation to remember life before the smartphone took over every waking second. The song felt like the closing ceremony for a certain kind of innocence.
Why the Lyrics Struck a Nerve
The lyrics are essentially a checklist of rock and roll self-destruction. "I'll move to Paris, shoot some heroin and fuck with the stars." It's blunt. It's almost cartoonish. VanWyngarden has mentioned in interviews that they were playing characters. They were "pretending" to be the very things they were singing about.
But there’s a genuine sadness buried under the fuzz.
When he sings about "the heart is beating out of time," it shifts from a satire of celebrity to a genuine anxiety about growing up. That’s the secret sauce of MGMT Time to Pretend. It’s a dance track that makes you feel a little bit like crying if you think about it too hard. It balances that "Indie Sleaze" aesthetic—all flashbulbs and smudged eyeliner—with a very real fear of the future.
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The Sound of the 2000s
Think about the landscape of 2007. The charts were dominated by Timbaland’s polished production and Fergie. Then you have these two art-school guys singing over what sounds like a broken Nintendo.
- The drums are huge and distorted.
- The synth lead is a classic "leaky" sawtooth wave.
- The vocals are drenched in reverb, making Andrew sound distant, like he’s calling out from the back of a cave.
This song, along with "Kids" and "Electric Feel," turned Oracular Spectacular into a juggernaut. It wasn't just a hit; it was a vibe shift. It paved the way for the "PBR Rock" era and eventually the massive explosion of synth-pop in the 2010s. Without MGMT, do we get the synth-heavy peaks of Tame Impala? Maybe not.
The Cultural Aftermath and the "Curse" of the Hit
Success is a weird beast. MGMT famously struggled with the massive popularity of their first record. They didn't want to be the "Time to Pretend" guys forever. Their follow-up album, Congratulations, was a hard left turn into 1960s psych-rock and surf music. It didn't have the "bangers" the label wanted.
Fans were confused. The industry was annoyed.
But looking back, that move was the most "Time to Pretend" thing they could have done. The song itself warned us they didn't want to play the game. "Forget about our mothers and our friends," they sang. They were literally telling us they were going to burn the bridge while they were still standing on it.
Honestly, that’s why the song has aged so well. It’s not a period piece. It doesn't sound "dated" in the way some 2008 electro-hop does. It sounds like a timeless expression of youthful arrogance and the inevitable comedown that follows.
The Visual Identity: That Music Video
You can’t talk about this track without mentioning the visuals. Directed by Ray Tintori, the music video is a fever dream of lo-fi CGI, giant cats, and neon face paint. It captured the "nu-rave" aesthetic perfectly. It looked like someone had dropped acid in a Jim Henson workshop.
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It was DIY, but expensive-looking. It was psychedelic, but digital. It bridged the gap between the psychedelic 60s and the Tumblr-era 2010s. If you go on Pinterest today and look up "2014 tumblr aesthetic," you can trace the DNA directly back to the imagery in the MGMT Time to Pretend video.
Technical Nuance: The Gear Behind the Sound
For the gear nerds out there, the sound of the track is heavily dictated by the Korg MS-20. That’s where that aggressive, chirpy synth tone comes from. They used it for the iconic opening riff, and it provides that unstable, "about to break" quality that defines the whole production.
Dave Fridmann’s role can’t be overstated either. He’s a master of "beautiful chaos." He takes clean pop melodies and runs them through so much outboard gear that they come out looking like a Jackson Pollock painting. In MGMT Time to Pretend, he ensured the low end was massive enough for festivals but the high end stayed sharp enough to cut through radio static.
What Most People Get Wrong
People often call this a "party song."
Sure, you can dance to it. It’s been played at every hipster wedding for the last fifteen years. But calling it a party song is like calling The Great Gatsby a book about how to throw a cool party. It misses the point entirely.
The song is a critique of the "Live Fast, Die Young" mentality. It’s about the absurdity of the music industry. It’s about the fact that we often value the image of a person more than the actual person. When Andrew sings, "I'll miss the playgrounds and the animals and digging into the dirt," he’s mourning his own humanity before he’s even lost it.
It's deep. It's cynical. And it's incredibly catchy.
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Actionable Insights for the Modern Listener
If you’re revisiting this track or discovering it for the first time, there are a few ways to really appreciate what MGMT did here.
1. Listen to the 2005 EP version vs. the 2007 album version. You’ll hear the evolution of a song from a college joke to a global anthem. It’s a masterclass in how production can change the meaning of a lyric. The EP version is cheeky; the album version is epic.
2. Watch the "Live at Glastonbury 2008" performance. There is a specific energy in that footage. The band looks almost bored, which was their whole "thing" at the time, but the crowd is losing their minds. It perfectly illustrates the disconnect between the creators and the consumers.
3. Explore the "Fridmann Sound." If you like the texture of this song, go listen to The Soft Bulletin by The Flaming Lips or Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. You'll hear the same DNA—the distorted drums, the soaring synths, and the sense of wonder.
4. Pay attention to the bridge. The instrumental break in the middle of the song is where the "pretending" stops for a second. The melody becomes soaring and almost spiritual before crashing back into that gritty, sarcastic synth riff.
MGMT Time to Pretend remains a landmark because it refused to play it straight. It gave us permission to be cynical about the world while still wanting to dance in the middle of it. It’s a song about the end of childhood, recorded by two guys who were just starting their adulthood, and it captured a moment in time that we probably won’t see again.
In an era of overly polished, algorithm-friendly pop, this track stands as a reminder that sometimes the best way to tell the truth is to admit you’re just pretending.
To get the full experience, put on some decent headphones, turn it up until the synth starts to hurt just a little bit, and remember what it felt like to be twenty and indestructible. Then go listen to their later work like Little Dark Age to see how those "kids" actually grew up. You'll find that the cynicism didn't go away—it just got a lot more sophisticated.