Mike Posner is a name you may only have a passing memory of, and Mike Posner knows that. Posner first emerged as an artist in 2009 with his hit song “Cooler Than Me.” The turn of the decade was a maximalist, enthusiastic time in the pop landscape. In his article for Vanity Fair describing songs that defined the 2010s, cultural critic DJ Louie XIV describes the popular sound at this time as such: “… everyone really craved some good, mindless fun as the decade rolled in … EDM-essentially European-style synth-driven club music — placed a vice grip on pop.” “Cooler Than Me,” with its synth-heavy production and swaggering personality, slotted well into this landscape. The song was a commercial success, dominating several charts and going on to be certified two times platinum in the United States. However, while “Cooler Than Me” was a catchy hit, the song didn’t do much to establish Posner as a pop star. His other attempts at singles didn’t reach the same highs, and his name slowly dissipated from the public consciousness. It’s a narrative that fits many one-hit wonders. The thing that sets Mike Posner apart though is that he managed to snag a second hit. That second hit was “I Took a Pill In Ibiza (Seeb Remix),” which was released in 2016. The song succeeded because it allowed Posner to shed his previous image while still using it as a springboard toward a more vulnerable, relatable persona. The production choices of the song work to heighten the song’s meaning and Posner’s new persona along with it.
The transformation of Posner’s persona is most evident in the way “I Took a Pill In Ibiza” is written. There are several significant differences in the lyrical choices on “Cooler Than Me” versus “I Took a Pill In Ibiza.” In “Cooler Than Me,” Posner describes a romantic interest that has decided that she’s cooler than the speaker. The lyrics mainly focus on attacking the girl’s presentation, how her “designer shades” hide her face, and how she wears too much makeup for anyone to get to know the real her. Posner sings “I got you all figured out,” but his petty jabs come off as insecure. The speaker craves this girl’s attention, and when she doesn’t give him what he wants, he lashes out.
However, on “I Took a Pill In Ibiza,” Posner instead turns the critique back onto himself. His insecurities are no longer subtext, but the subject of the song. Take the opening line: “I took a pill in Ibiza / To show Avicii I was cool.” This line immediately sets the song in a specific time, place, and headspace for Posner. Taking drugs at a glitzy island getaway with a famous DJ is turned into a desperate attempt for acceptance from one’s peers. Other references to this are sprinkled throughout the song, found in lines like: “I drive a sports car just to prove / I’m a real big baller ’cause I made a million dollars / And I spend it on girls and shoes.” Status symbols such as a “sports car,” “a million dollars,” “girls,” and “shoes,” are not sources of joy or fulfillment. Instead, they are used in attempts to “prove” Posner’s self worth. The opulent lifestyle Posner’s success has afforded him rings hollow as he now struggles to maintain that facade of fame and fortune not just to others, but also to himself. In doing this, Posner’s persona takes on more vulnerability than in the past, and while the story of “I Took a Pill In Ibiza” is specifically his own, it also feels far more relatable.
This shift in perspective mirrors Mike Posner’s maturation as an artist. Posner hadn’t even graduated college when he released “Cooler Than Me.” “I Took A Pill In Ibiza” reveals a Posner that’s older, wiser, and more experienced. Further, Posner’s critique of luxuriant pop tropes also reflects a wider trend in the pop landscape throughout the 2010s, specifically after Lorde released “Royals” in 2013. Later in his article for Vanity Fair, DJ Louie XIV writes about the impact of “Royals”: “[it] opened the popular music conversation to a generation of stars who preferred introspection to overindulgence and questioned everything sold to them rather than reveling in it.” “I Took a Pill In Ibiza” does just that.
But Posner’s lyrics are only half of the equation that makes up the success of “I Took a Pill In Ibiza.” Posner’s original version of the song was a ballad with stripped-back, acoustic production. The version of the song that got popular was a remix by the Swedish production duo Seeb, consisting of Simen Eriksrud and Espen Berg. While this remix alters the structure and tone of the song, it doesn’t counteract Posner’s lyricism as one might expect.
In “Soul Sonic Forces: Technology, Orality, and Black Cultural Practice in Rap Music,” Tricia Rose explores several aspects of the hip-hop genre, including its use of repetition. At one point, Rose examines the theories of French political economist Jacques Attali: “For Attali … repetition is primarily considered a manifestation of mass culture … The advent of recording technology signaled the emergence of a society of mass production and repetition” (71). Rose goes on to argue against Attali’s argument in the context of the rap genre. In rap music, Rose writes: “repetition cannot be reduced to a repressive, industrial force … rap music uses rhythmic forces that are informed by mass reproduction technology … in ways that affirm black cultural priorities that sometimes work against market forces” (72). According to Rose, repetition can be used as a tool of cultural memory to build rhythm and play with a listener’s expectations.
When looking at these arguments in the context of pop music, Attali and Rose’s positions don’t necessarily conflict but coexist with one another. If repetition is “a manifestation of mass culture” like Attali implies, then it makes sense that the genre of pop, whose goal is to reach as big of a mass of people as possible, would use repetition as a tool to achieve that goal. In transforming Posner’s song into a pop hit, Seeb condensed the material and made it more repetitive. “I Took a Pill In Ibiza” is completely restructured in the remix. Seeb shortened the length from over four and a half minutes to just over three. The original version of the song had a bridge that the remix cuts. Seeb added in a post-chorus “drop,” consisting of a dancey instrumental and chopped-up vocal samples of Posner. The tempo is upped from 74 beats per minute to 104 beats per minute. With such a dramatic change being made, it is perfectly reasonable to assume that Seeb commodified Posner’s work, transforming a personal, emotional ballad into a consumable pop song for the “mass culture.”
But the deeper meanings Rose attributes to the practice of repetition in songwriting are also present. Another one of the elements of hip-hop music Rose defines are “break beats,” which are “points of rupture in their former contexts, points at which the thematic elements of a musical piece are suspended and underlying rhythms brought to center stage” (73-74). While Rose discusses break beats in the context of hip-hop, the description she provides also applies to Seeb’s formation of the drop in “I Took a Pill In Ibiza.” Throughout the verses, Posner’s vocals take center stage, underlaid with bright synths and heavily echoing snaps. This draws the listener’s attention to his lyrics, which helps establish the emotional core of the song. However, with the introduction of the drop, Seeb ruptures the expectations the listener has up until that point. Similar to the way a break beat functions, during this drop, the “underlying” instrumental elements of the verses flesh out, taking “center stage.” The synths that were previously used in the background now swarm around a central melody that rises and falls. Atop this instrumental, Seeb brings back a sample of Posner’s voice from the pre-chorus. The lyric “All I know are sad songs / are sad songs” is repeated throughout the drop. This one lyric stands in as the “thematic element” Rose describes, and both the words “All I know are sad songs / are sad songs” and the repetition of those words elevate the mood Posner creates. While the drop has a sense of movement and progression to it, these vocal snippets remain “suspended” in place. These snippets have been lifted from the previous passage, the only difference being the context the vocal fragments are placed in. When all of these elements come together, it’s like the listener is peeking into Posner’s head, watching him dwell on his fate in a never-ending loop.
While Rose analyzes how a music phrase such as the drop works thematically within the piece of music, the format of the drop can also influence the listener’s emotions. In his book Music, Thought and Feeling, William Forde Thompson goes over several theories about the connection between music and emotion. Thompson describes how many listeners have a visceral response to a “sudden dynamic or textural change” (93). “Sudden dynamic or textural change” is another apt description that suits Seeb’s drop in “I Took a Pill In Ibiza.” Both structurally and emotionally, these drops offer the listener a moment of reprieve from Posner’s lyrics while still incorporating just enough of his presence to maintain the theme of the song. The intensity of the groove, the danceability in these drops, allows for possible catharsis. With Seeb’s restructuring, “I Took a Pill In Ibiza” is not just a pop song. It’s a dance song.
Turning “I Took a Pill In Ibiza” into a dance song at first seems ironic. Posner’s lyrics deride club culture, and yet, the remix, with its upbeat tempo and danceable drop, places that critique back into the context of the club. However, in changing the sound of “I Took a Pill In Ibiza,” Seeb also changes the function of it. In her essay “Slaves to the Rhythm? Using Music, Space, Dance, and the Ideas of the Body,” Fiona Buckland examines how dance music provides a sense of community and autonomy in queer club spaces. “The collaboration between dancers and DJs,” Buckland writes, “produced pleasure through valuing exchange” (66). Furthermore, “… the music and space could become vehicles of autonomous invention” (83). While Buckland’s analysis centers on queer nightclubs, this phenomenon doesn’t just apply to those spaces. Dance music’s power to cultivate relationships with others and the self can apply to anyone. If the dancefloor and its accompanying music can be vehicles for self-actualization and understanding, then through changing the genre of “I Took a Pill In Ibiza” from acoustic ballad to dance track, this song about isolation transforms into a means of connection.
“I Took a Pill In Ibiza” translates so well into the dance space because Posner also uses the song as a means of connection to his audience. One line that best encapsulates this comes at the start of the second verse: “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.” In this line, Posner takes advantage of the audience’s preconceived ideas about him, their recognition or nostalgia for “Cooler Than Me,” and twists it. “Cooler Than Me” becomes “a pop song people forgot,” transforming from the song that launched him to stardom into a source of regret, a reminder of how he “blew his shot.” The “people” in this line are the listeners themselves. Posner creates a link between himself and the listener, acknowledging their role in his story.
This isn’t the only reference to the audience in the lyrics. There are several lines in the pre-chorus that reference this “you” that is the audience: “you don’t wanna be high like me … You don’t ever wanna step off that roller coaster and be all alone … You don’t wanna ride the bus like this … You don’t wanna be stuck up on that stage singing…” In employing these references, Posner capitalizes on the potential recognition of the audience, connecting himself to them as he acknowledges his own shortcomings. He then uses that connection and acknowledgement to posit himself within a cautionary tale and also a redemption arc.
The public perception of Mike Posner after “Cooler Than Me” may not have been all that positive, but that gave him room to grow. It’s easier to root for an underdog than it is to root for someone who’s got it “all figured out.” In contrast to the juvenile bravado that permeates “Cooler Than Me,” the Posner on “I Took a Pill In Ibiza” is more mature and achingly self-aware. This connection with the audience is where Posner’s new persona snaps into place. On “Cooler Than Me,” Posner kept his distance, content with pushing people away. On “I Took a Pill In Ibiza,” he’s letting people in.
With “I Took a Pill In Ibiza,” Mike Posner didn’t just evolve into a new, more appealing image, he also managed to evolve with the times. Pop music had changed drastically from 2010 to 2016. In “Are We Having Fun Yet? On Pop’s Morose New Normal,” written in 2018, Jayson Greene discusses how the pop charts in the late 2010s shifted away from the “EDM-essentially European-style synth-driven club music” DJ Louis XIV described from the turn of the decade. Greene identifies several factors that have contributed to this cultural shift, including greater accessibility to the news via the Internet, an increased demand for authenticity brought on by the intimacy of social media, hip-hop overtaking pop as the dominant genre in the U.S., and the advent of streaming. “Now,” Greene writes, “pop music lies coiled up inside our phones alongside everything else — the banalities of friends and strangers, the horrors of the news.” By 2016, dance floor bangers like “Cooler Than Me” were a relic of a bygone era.
In “Popping the Drop: A Timeline of How EDM’s Bubble Burst,” Philip Sherburne discusses the dwindling popularity of these kinds of song in the 2010s, identifying “I Took a Pill In Ibiza” as its last dying gasp, a song that manages to balance the propulsion of the dance genre with the morose tone taking over the pop charts. In this article, Sherburne quotes a review of the song by American music critic Bob Lefsetz, who discusses how the “I Took a Pill In Ibiza” remix subverted his anti-EDM bias with its revealing lyricism and smart production choices. “Whew! This is a guy, being vulnerable,” Lefsetz writes, “It’d be easy to dismiss the modern pop scene, EDM … But when you uncover gems you’re touched, feel as you always did.”
The critical and commercial success of “I Took a Pill In Ibiza” freed Posner from his status as a one-hit wonder, a sizable accomplishment in the pop sphere. Posner’s subversion of the smug, insecure persona he established on “Cooler Than Me” and of wider tropes about success allowed him to take on a more relatable persona that people could root for. Seeb’s transformation of the song into a dance hit worked in favor of the song’s meaning and its ability to connect with a wide audience. Ultimately, “I Took a Pill In Ibiza” showcases Posner’s ability to evolve, to push his persona and appeal, and sound to not only suit the time of the song’s release, but also his strengths as a performer.
Since the success of “I Took a Pill In Ibiza,” Mike Posner has remained an amorphous presence in the pop sphere. He’s continued to release music, though hasn’t scored any major hits, and has also continued to work behind the scenes for other artists. If one decides to measure an artist’s success through their ability to continue making charting hits, then it may appear that “I Took a Pill In Ibiza” wasn’t a breakthrough for Posner at all, just another novel highlight in his discography. But sometimes, it’s not just about the volume of hits, but more so how those hits stick in our memories and their ability to touch their audience and reveal new truths to them. In the annotations of the song’s lyrics on Genius.com, Posner revealed the following about the writing process for “I Took a Pill In Ibiza”: “[My friend] looked at me and he said, ‘Why don’t you just tell the truth?’ I didn’t really have an answer for that question, at the time. But after leaving that studio… I wrote ‘I Took a Pill In Ibiza.’ I suppose that was my answer to the question.” It appears as though Posner was successful in that endeavor.
“I Took a Pill In Ibiza” may have slotted perfectly into the more morose pop landscape of the late 2010s, but the song is far from hopeless. When it was tearing up the charts, listeners all over the world got to know Mike Posner through his unique perspective on fame, regret, and loneliness. Seeb’s remix opened up the song’s listener base, creating community in spite of that loneliness. In that, the song might have helped those tuning in feel a little less alone themselves. If not for anything else, for that, the song is a smashing success.
Bibliography:
“BPM and Key for I Took a Pill in Ibiza by Mike Posner: Tempo for I Took a Pill in Ibiza.” Song BPM, https://songbpm.com/@mike-posner/i-took-a-pill-in-ibiza
“BPM and Key for I Took a Pill in Ibiza (Seeb Remix) by Mike Posner: Tempo for I Took a Pill in Ibiza.” Song BPM, https://songbpm.com/@mike-posner/i-took-a-pill-in-ibiza—seeb-remix-00749410-b787-4649-bb75-946a445aa500
Buckland, Fiona. Impossible dance: Club culture and queer world-making. Ch. 3: “Slaves to the Rhythm? Using Music, Space, Dance, and the Ideas of the Body.” Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. 2002.
Greene, Jayson. “Are We Having Fun Yet? on Pop’s Morose New Normal.” Pitchfork, 8 Nov. 2018, https://pitchfork.com/features/overtones/are-we-having-fun-yet-on-pops-morose-new-normal/
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“Mike Posner – I Took a Pill in Ibiza.” Genius, https://genius.com/Mike-posner-i-took-a-pill-in-ibiza-lyrics
“Mike Posner – Cooler Than Me.” Genius, https://genius.com/Mike-posner-cooler-than-me-lyrics
Rose, Tricia. Sounding Off! Music as Subversion/Resistance/Revolution. “Soul sonic forces: technology, orality, and black cultural practice in rap music.” 1995
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XIV, DJ Louie. “10 Songs That Explain the 2010s.” Vanity Fair, 12 Dec. 2019, https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2019/12/songs-of-the-decade-2010s