Electric Feel

“Electric Feel” is perhaps one of American alternative-rock band MGMT’s most well-known and well-loved fans, with a unique musical sound and clever lyrics. Written by both members of MGMT (Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden) with production done by Dave Fridmann, “Electric Feel” is an upbeat 60’s style indie track comparing sexual tension and pleasure to feeling “electric”. It is the fourth track from their 2007 album, “Oracular Spectacular”.

In a 2007 interview with Justine Trickett for music and skateboarding publication “Caught in the Crossfire”, MGMT had this to say about their general songwriting process as well as “Electric Feel”: “A lot of times when we write songs we have had some kind of influence or a style that we really want to put into our music. Like, we’ll say let’s have that part sound like this and that part sound like that and then we piece it all together. We didn’t plan anything, it was more of a song by song thing. We tend to be inspired a lot by artists that switch genres each album. Each song is different. ‘Legendary Pink Dots‘ are like that. When we were writing the album they were a big influence. We literally just wrote whatever came to us. There is a weird combination on the album because it has a couple of older tracks on it which were originally electronic with a more dancey feel. ‘Electric Feel’ was one of the first songs we wrote, well the first actual song with lyrics.” The song has been covered by many popular artists, such as Katy Perry, Frank Ocean and many others.

The music video for “Electric Feel” was uploaded to MGMT’s YouTube channel on the 25th October 2009 and was directed by Ray Tintori. The video features MGMT in a forest in the middle of the Tikal jungle in Guatemala, surrounded by various people doing chores, eventually stealing the moon from the sky and cutting it open – leading the people to paint themselves with the neon liquid from the moon. As of mid-April 2020, the video has 136.3 million views with 682 thousand likes.

Release Date: 2nd October 2007

Songwriter/s: Ben Goldwasser & Andrew VanWyngarden

Producer: Dave Fridmann

Label: Columbia

Music Video Release Date: 25th October 2009

Music Video Director: Ray Tintori

Chart Rankings & Accolades: In a year of its release, “Electric Feel” reached #27 and #7 on various charts in Australia, #17 in Belgium, #24 in Ireland, #10 in New Zealand, #22 in the UK and #14 in the US. “Electric Feel” was ranked at #5 on NME’s Top Singles of 2008 list.

The lyrics to “Electric Feel” can be viewed here: LINK