 Gotye was initially reported to have been unimpressed with the Glee rendition of his song , but later stated that his words had been taken out of context . On April 22 , 2012 , two Australian newspapers , the Sunday Mail and the Sunday Herald Sun , quoted him as having said , " They did such a faithful arrangement of the instrumentals but the vocals were that pop Glee style " . The Mail 's quote continued after a comma with " ultra @-@ dry , sounded pretty tuned and the rock has no real sense , like it 's playing to you from a cardboard box . " The Herald Sun 's continuation of the quote came after a period : " It made it sound dinky and wrong . " Gotye said in an interview the next day that he had been referring to " this xylophone hook in my song — it 's kind of dinky not just in the cover version but the original song " . He added , " I thought it was really clever to transpose the song to two guys ... It was a great idea . " In an interview published ten days later , Glee 's executive music producer Adam Anders said that although the iTunes version of the song that the show released was " very true " to Gotye 's , that in the episode itself , " the reality is , it was drier " . 
