Hate or Love "Congratulations" MGMT Deserves Respect

Now that MGMT's sophomore album, Congratulations, has finally been officially released (because I'm sure none of you illegally helped yourself to it when it leaked last month), the criticism has been pouring in from all sides, alongside a nation full of youth let down by the lack of any huge hits such as "Kids", "Time to Pretend" or "Electric Feel" this time around.

However, Congratulations was not without fair warning. Ben Goldwasser told NME in January that "We'd rather people hear the whole album as an album and see what tracks jump out rather than the ones that get played on the radio – if anything gets played on the radio! ... There definitely isn't a 'Time to Pretend' or a 'Kids' on the album. We've been talking about ways to
make sure people hear the album as an album in order and not just figure
out what are the best three tracks, download those and not listen to
the rest of it."

I'll admit that I too, was a bit taken aback by how different the majority of Congratulations sounds, compared to how I knew MGMT to be from their smash album, Oracular Spectacular. What needs to be remembered though is that MGMT (Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser) never wanted to be pop stars, we put that on them. Much like their hit song "Time to Pretend", where VanWyngarden and Goldwasser wrote about pretending to be rock stars, MGMT never expected to become the huge success that a couple singles from their last album has turned them into. MGMT has also turned down the likes of touring with Lady GaGa, U2, and Coldplay, as Goldwasser explained "Well, we really do feel like we were blown out of proportion by everybody. We don't feel like pop stars, we feel like a rock band. We don't want to play arenas. It's not our mission."

MGMT is just trying to be themselves. The songs "Time to Pretend" and "Kids" were both initially released back in 2005, and then a few years later ended up launching them to unexpected levels of stardom. Instead of trying to milk their fame and success for everything they can get from it, MGMT has actually had the courage to just keep doing what interests them and what they enjoy, rather than what will present the largest check and publicity.

And so, even if Congratulations failed to live up to your expectations, don't blame MGMT for it, because they have made some of the boldest choices I've seen, in order to avoid money and fame from influencing their artistic vision.

Check out the video for their song "Flash Delirium" below (even if you don't like the song, the video is very cool and unique!) and you can listen to all of Congratulations on their Myspace page, here.