This part of the personal experience is crucial if you want to understand why the song sounds so true. Gotye did not build it as a simple narrative of one bad breakup. He built it as a “curated reflection,” as a carefully edited reflection of many relationships and many different wounds. And that is exactly why it was able to work so widely. It was not a diary. It was a condensation of emotions that many people have felt after a breakup, when the other person turns from the center of your world into someone who now feels almost like a stranger.