MGMT Steal A Hit Filipino Synthpop Song In Their Reality-Blurring New Video For ‘Me And Michael’

MGMT’s highly anticipated album, Little Dark Age, comes out in just a couple days, but before that, they’re offering one last preview of their upcoming fourth album: Today, the band has shared a video for “Me And Michael” that genuinely blurs the line between fiction and reality.

In the video (directed by Joey Frank and Randy Maitland), MGMT gets so into a song by Filipino band True Faith (who are actually a real band in the Philippines, by the way) that they decide to plagiarize it and record it for themselves. The song becomes a hit, but when the inevitable theft accusations come, things start going in a less positive direction. What’s most interesting about the song and video is how deep this narrative goes: True Faith actually recorded the “original” version of the song, “Ako at si Michael,” in real life, and they released a video for it a few days ago, all for the sake of this MGMT music video.

VanWyngarden previously said that the song came about due to the duo “rediscovering their shared love of European synthpop,” and that the chorus originally said, “Me and my girl.” He continued, “Then I was like, ‘That’s so bor­ing and cheesy, let’s make it ‘Me And Michael’,’ which de­vel­oped into this am­bigu­ous story, and we re­ally liked that — writ­ing a catchy song that gets you pumped up, but you have no idea what the mes­sage is.”

Watch the video above, and check out our interview with the band here.

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