The story behind the sad song I Took a Pill to Ibiza
I think most everyone has already heard Mike Posner’s recent smash hit I Took a Pill to Ibiza. The first time I heard it and found out that it was by Mike Posner, the immediate thing I said was “wow, this guy’s still making music?” I only heard the SeeB remix of the song a few months ago. I thought it was a good tropical EDM track but I didn’t really pay attention to the lyrics. It was when I heard Jamie Cullum’s jazz cover of I Took a Pill to Ibiza for his Song Society project that I noticed the lyrics were kinda sad. It was only then that I started to appreciate Mike Posner’s songwriting ability. It is quite a poignant song if you think about it.
Like most everyone, I first knew Mike Posner in 2010 when I heard his really cheeky pop song Cooler than Me. The song was popular in 2010 and made Mike Posner’s name famous for a bit. Eventually he got buried under all those more famous musicians who had larger fan bases like Lady Gaga who just released Bad Romance and Telephone at the time, or Taylor Swift who was still a country diva who released her anticipated album Speak Now, and Justin Bieber who was still a young innocent Canadian pop star who just released his compilation album My Worlds.
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Eventually everybody forgot about Mike Posner even though he released decent follow-up singles like Please Don’t Go and Bow Chicka Wow Wow. His debut album 31 Minutes to Takeoff was mildly successful, but Posner began to feel uncomfortable and struggled with depression. He took a break from making music and started to write songs for other artists. He co-wrote Sugar with Maroon 5 and Boyfriend with Justin Bieber.
In the first half of the 2010’s, Mike Posner continued to produce music but he couldn’t make another smash like Cooler than Me. In 2014, Posner wrote and recorded a sad acoustic song called I Took a Pill to Ibiza.
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In August 2015, Posner explained the inspiration to the song,” It was sort of a mystery pill. I was already under the influence of alcohol at the time. I had written a song with Avicii that week in Sweden called “Stay with You” and he was playing in Ibiza so I said, ‘I will just go there with you,’ because I was already in Europe. I don’t have like a regular 9–5 job … so might as well go to Ibiza, right? I had never been there before. So I went. We were at his show and I was drinking at the time. (I don’t drink anymore, but I wasn’t playing and I had no responsibilities except for enjoying myself so I was taking some vodka shots and probably some whisky if I know myself.) And I just sort of moseyed out into the audience to watch Avicii spin from their point of view. I would go back and forth between the backstage and the VIP area and then where the actual kids were. And most people didn't know who the fuck I was in Ibiza except for this one guy who recognized me. He was like, 'Are you Mike Posner?' and he was
all excited. He holds up this little bag of pills and is like, 'You want one?' And drunk Mike Posner was like, 'Fuck it, yeah.' So I took one and I had never done that before, and I felt amazing. Then when I came down I felt 10 years older”.
A Norwegian EDM duo named called SeeB found the track and remixed it. They said the track was really slow and that they only listened to the vocals. They thought it had brilliant lyric and melody but needed a new sound scape to be a hit.
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Posner called the success of the remix version both "ironic" and "beautiful" Mike Posner later said of the remix, “I wrote this sad thing, and it was me processing some dark and heavy emotion, and now people seem to be having their own joyous memories out of my sadness. That’s a very beautiful thing as an artist."
2016 might get a little better for Mike Posner. Having a smash hit ironically about being not able to have a smash hit is a beautiful turn of events. There’s a line in the song that goes “I’m just a singer who already blew his shot. I get along with old-timers ‘cause my name’s a reminder of a pop song people forgot”. I Took a Pill to Ibiza is already number 4 in the Billboard Hot 100 and it might prove that Mike Posner’s name might stay a little longer and that old-timers and new ones will remember his name for years to come.
Now here’s nostalgia for you brought by 2010 Mike Posner.
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