“Time To Pretend”: MGMT and The Art of Pop Parody

MGMT started out as a joke.

The band formed in 2002 while its members, Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser, were studying music at Wesleyan University. The duo began playing shows together with a larger-than-life rock star presentation, wearing fur coats and sunglasses and popping champagne with their peers. Even the band’s name is a riff on “the management,” bringing the artifice of the music industry to the forefront. “Time To Pretend” became the band’s ironic mission statement, a way for them to delve deeper into the phony rockstar persona. 

“Time To Pretend” seemingly originated from a similar place. The song was created on Goldwasser’s laptop in a dorm room, concocted of stock presets stretched as far as they could go. This original version of the song went on to become the title track of the band’s debut EP in 2005. It’s a fuzzy wonderland of buzzy distortion, undulating synths reminiscent of burbling water, and hissing backing vocals. Lyrically, the group describe the “fantasy rock star life” of dating models, shooting up heroin, and all in all living life on the edge. 

Fate had an interesting path laid out for MGMT. Off the momentum that EP generated, the band signed to Columbia records in 2006. In preparation for their first album, Columbia wanted to re-release “Time To Pretend,” in part to own a master, but also because of the potential for the song to become a hit. With the help of producer Dave Fridmann, the band got to work. Their first album, Oracular Spectacular, was released in 2007. 

The version of “Time To Pretend” that appears on Oracular Spectacular is more polished than the original. It’s less low-fi, doing away with much of the original version’s distortion and upping the tempo to make it more danceable. Listening to it, one might feel like they’re witnessing the band’s commodification in real time, the rougher edges of the mix being filed away in service of radio-readiness. But that’s far from the case. Given the time crunch the band was under in producing Oracular Spectacular, the new version of “Time To Pretend” contains a lot of the original recordings they made. The track’s lively atmosphere remains, and shines even more with crisper drums, more prominent vocals, and a more engaging pace, and a cleaner mix. 

It isn’t just rock stars the group are poking fun at, but the idea of stardom itself, the glamor and excess that comes with making it in the music industry. These concepts aren’t relegated to the rock genre. While rock stars may have at one point been these shining beacons of success, by 2008, the prominence of rock had given way to pop music. In a way, pop stars were the new rock stars. In its reworking, the messy charm of the original “Time To Pretend” has evolved into its final form. Instead of solely deriding the glamor of rock stardom, or pop success, the group now, in part, indulge in it as well. 

The best parodies come not just from a place of mockery, but also from a place of love. On “Time To Pretend,” you can tell that MGMT aren’t just pop skeptics, but pop students too. The band’s references on Oracular Spectacular sprawl out in every direction, from Prince to The Beatles to David Bowie. Given that, it might be surprising to learn that “Time To Pretend” has several Abba references tucked within it. When reworking “Time to Pretend,” they upped the beats per minute to match “Dancing Queen.” If you listen closely, buried deep in the mix of the track’s back end, one can hear an interpolation of the piano line from “Dancing Queen” too. 

This connection to “Dancing Queen” extends beyond the band’s production choices. Both songs fall into the pop tradition of youth obsession. While “Dancing Queen” is a frothy celebration of teenage jubilance, “Time To Pretend” knows all too well just how quickly that fun can end. The glamor the group describes in the first verse is nothing more than a facade, something to lean into to push aside the ache for the past. “Forget about our mothers and our friends,” they sing to finish off the first verse, “we’re fated to pretend.” The denial in these lyrics is revealed as the second verse unfurls a list of things missed and lost in the past: playground antics, the comfort of one’s mother, family, and privacy. In the following verse, the final details the listener gets show an anticlimactic finale to the group’s rockstar antics: “We'll choke on our vomit and that will be the end / We’re fated to pretend.” It’s a more morose turn that reveals the pathos at the heart of the persona.

While there is tragedy to it, “Time To Pretend” is far from hopeless. In the song’s closing moments, the refrain of “fated to pretend” gives way to the simple chant of “yeah yeah yeah,” fading out with the song. The “yeah”s may just be a jab at empty, repetitive pop lyrics, or an effective attempt to get a crowd singing along, but they also offer an element of hope for the song to close out on. The speaker may be “fated to pretend,” but sometimes fate can lead to unexpected places. 

These choices imbue the jokey ethos of the song’s inception with more complexity. Ultimately, “Time To Pretend” surpasses its original intent of pop parody, looping back around to become just a great pop song. The song as a whole, with its catchy riffs, danceable grooves, and upbeat tempo all read as a parody and celebration alike. This shift also emcompasses the band’s ethos as they obtained success of their own. While talking with Interview Magazine right after Oracular Spectacular came out, Goldwasser had this to say about the band’s intent: “...whether we consciously did it or not, it’s become a serious thing that we’re investing ourselves in. It would be hard to keep doing this if we didn’t take it seriously.”

For a joke to land, it’s got to resonate with something deeper. If that’s the case, maybe MGMT weren’t just pretending after all.