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Mike Posner Talks 'I Took A Pill In Ibiza'

02/29/2016
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(Radio.com) Even in the digital age, some songs still require time to grow organically. Such is the case with Mike Posner's smash, "I Took a Pill in Ibiza." Posner wrote the track back in 2014 as an acoustic song but he didn't release it until a year later.

Then, in 2015, SeeB (a Norwegian duo specializing in remixes) reworked the track. Almost immediately it caught fire throughout Europe. "It's a little deja vu-y with my first single, 'Cooler Than Me,' Posner tells Radio.com. "The same kind of thing happened. I wrote the track. It was me and Big Sean� I produced it. And then a guy named Gigamesh remixed it. That time it may have even been around longer. Maybe two or three years before the radio started playing it." Indeed, Posner's wait did pay off. "Cooler Than Me" charted in 19 countries reaching number 3 on Billboard Pop Chart.

The same thing is happening again. After more than two years, one of his tracks has caught fire thanks to the unexpected reception of a remix. Although Posner embraces remixes, having made dozens of them for A-list artists, SeeB's didn't stand out at first. "I was in a singer-songwriter phase. I was listening to a lot of Bob Dyland and Merle Haggard. They sent it over and I kind of just half listened to it," he admits.

At first the song blew up in Norway thanks to SeeB, then quickly spread throughout the Netherlands and Europe and hit stateside months later. But the irony� oh the irony. There's a lot of it with "I Took A Pill in Ibiza." "The track is about being done with the scene. The writing of that song has thrust me back into the scene," says Posner through a chuckle. "That I think it's comical."

After "Cooler Than Me," Posner's former label was unable to get another single to connect and subsequent songs failed, leaving him in limbo for years. He sold his Porsche, his shoe collection and nearly everything he considered excessive and distracting, minus the house, and drove around the West Coast in a "creepy 1994 Dodge Ram conversation van" in search of himself. Staying with friends, attending Burning Man, even taking a pill in Ibiza, which resulted in him feeling ten years older. "Physically I felt terrible," he confessed. "I think I gained many life experiences in that three or four hours." But this wasn't the first time the singer/songwriter has taken a psychoactive substance. Read more here.

Radio.com is an official news provider for antiMusic.com.
Copyright Radio.com/CBS Local - Excerpted here with permission.

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