The Only Reason We Didn’t Work Out

MGMT “She Works Out Too Much”

“I’m constantly swiping and tapping, it’s never relaxing,” Andrew VanWyngarden sings midway through “She Works Out Too Much.” It would be easy for this to come out sounding shrill and judgmental, but he sounds legitimately bored and exhausted. This song is particular to Instagram, but I think it speaks to something a lot of people have been experiencing with different social platforms in the past two years or so: Is any of this still fun? And what are we getting out of this, besides new ways to feel anxious, insecure, or unsafe?

I personally ran into this wall with Twitter, and have stopped reading and participating in that platform altogether. At first it was because I was tired of constantly checking a timeline that was increasingly packed with paranoia, dread, anguish, and in the worst moments, outright hysteria. But once I stopped reading the stuff, I stopped writing tweets as well. I didn’t anticipate how freeing that would be. Twitter is a platform that rewards anger and negativity, so even my fairly benign presence took on a snippy, aggrieved tone. The platform subtly encouraged my worst impulses, but I’ve found that once I stopped having an outlet and audience for bitchy little thoughts, I stopped having so many bitchy little thoughts. I’m better for it, and so is anyone else. No one needs this from me. No one needs this from the vast majority of people.

But I digress. “She Works Out Too Much” is a very light-hearted song, but it’s coming from a sad and dissatisfied place. The central lyrical conceit is the way it contrasts different meanings of the phrase “work out” – in literal terms, a reference to a girl’s endless workout selfies, and in idiomatic terms, “work out” as in a relationship succeeding or not. VanWyngarden’s lines in the chorus are toothless complaints – “she works out too much” – but that’s answered with a cool, relaxed, and weirdly uncanny female voice calmly intoning “the only reason we didn’t work out is that we didn’t work out enough.” There’s a disconnect here, they’re speaking past each other. It’s a great way of illustrating the point that these two people are not compatible, have totally different ways of engaging with the world, and value different things. I appreciate that this song is not angry or accusing. VanWyngarden sounds disappointed. He just wanted it to all work out.

Buy it from Amazon.