Feels Like We Only Go Backwards
2012 single by Tame Impala
"Feels Like We Only Go Backwards" is a song by Australian psychedelic rock band Tame Impala. It is the seventh track on their 2012 album Lonerism, and was released as its second single on 1 October 2012. The single features artwork from Australian artist Leif Podhajsky, who also created the artwork for their first album, Innerspeaker. In an interview with Rick Rubin on the podcast Broken Record, Kevin Parker said he wrote "Feels Like We Only Go Backwards" after being inspired by "Walk in the Park" by Beach House.
At the 2013 West Australian Music Industry Awards, the song won Single of the Year.
Music video
The music video was directed by Joseph Pelling and Becky Sloan, best known as creators of Don't Hug Me I'm Scared web series. The music video consists of psychedelic clay animation.
Critical reception
The song was voted on many year end best of lists in 2012. Pitchfork named it the 7th best song of 2012, and said of the track; "it will blow your brain back to its most purely joyous and least cynical recesses." The same website also ranked it #192 on their list of the 200 best songs of the 2010s. It placed ninth on the Triple J Hottest 100 of 2012.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards” is 2012 single by Tame Impala. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Feels, Like and Only, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q17001993. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2012 and 2013.
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This entry incorporates text from “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.