Over a decade since its release, Tame Impala‘s “The Less I Know the Better” has remained a global phenomenon. Aside from appearing on music charts around the world, it has been streamed over 2.4 billion times on Spotify. That’s not bad, considering Tame Impala leader Kevin Parker wrote it in less than an hour.
In a new interview on Mix with the Masters, Parker explained the track’s creation, from concept to mixing.
“What’s funny about this song is I made it in like 15 [or] 30 minutes,” Parker says. “For whatever reason on that night I was feeling particularly funky and I just had the right feel.”
His idea blended psych rock with funk and pop. It was so different from anything he had written before that he tried to have Mark Ronson record it, but he politely declined, suggesting Parker record it himself.
Watch the whole “Behind the Track” interview:
What Makes Tame Impala’s “The Less I Know the Better” So Unique
Maybe it was the stream-of-consciousness writing style, but “The Less I Know the Better” has an unusual form. As Ryan Lerman and Jack Conte of Dead Wax point out, it doesn’t have the traditional pop song format of verse/chorus/verse/chorus. “It’s A-B-A-B-C, and the A’s are not choruses,” Conte states. “[There’s] not a big refrain that everyone sings along and the chorus part that everyone knows. It’s full of hooks but there’s no traditional pop song form that is the chorus that everyone sings along to.”
Not only is there no discernible chorus, but the vocals are also low in the mix. Parker says he regrets mixing them so low, calling them “washed out.” There’s also no vocal harmony to be found, but that’s a signature style for Parker.
“What I just realized about this song is that there’s not a single harmony,” he says in the Behind the Track interview. “There would be the vocal double that I would mix in lower. That’s the Tame Impala sound.”
The Bass Line Behind Tame Impala’s “The Less I Know the Better”
Probably the most prominent hook of the song is the bass line, which is bouncy yet solid in the groove. It announces the song with a C# minor pentatonic lick before settling into the pattern. The A section starts on C# minor before moving through B to E major. Parker then uses G# minor to pull the progression back toward C# minor, restarting the cycle.
The bass line plays a similar pattern that emphasizes the chord root with dotted eighth, sixteenth, and quarter-note rhythms, then jumps an octave to slide between the root and ninth of the chord. The second phrase over each chord is very similar, utilizing C#, D#, and B. Using the same melodic fragment over different chords is another hallmark of what makes this song tick. However, Conte and Lerman point out that the bass line lands on beat four of each measure, making for an interesting earworm.
“It’s as if the bass is playing a different song than the chords,” Conte says. Lerman agrees, saying, “It works because the bass is a strong melody. When your bassline is that hooky, it gives you such a strong foundation to build on top of, because it’s cohesive within itself.”
Get their full analysis in this episode of Dead Wax:
Despite its unconventional structure, understated vocals, and bass-line hook, “The Less I Know the Better” never feels awkward. Those aspects are what make the song so compelling. What started as a burst of creativity became one of Kevin Parker’s biggest songs because it followed his instinct and ignored “the rules” in all the right ways.
Get in the groove and listen to “The Less I Know the Better” with fresh ears:
