If Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Mike Posner can walk across the country, you can at least dance in your living room, and his latest single is your inspiring you to do just that.
The musician, producer and poet grew up in Detroit and started his journey in music by producing records for his friend and fellow Detroit man Big Sean. While releasing his own music, Posner began producing and writing music for other artists including Nick Jonas, Pharrell Williams, 2Chainz, Wiz Khalifa, and more. He even co-wrote “Sugar” by Maroon 5 and “Boyfriend” by Justin Bieber.
Posner’s music took on a life of its own with hit singles “I Took A Pill In Ibiza,” “Cooler Than Me,” and “Please Don’t Go,” all of which reached high marks on the Billboard charts. To date, Posner has four albums, a collaborative LP with blackbear, four mixtapes, and two poetry albums under his belt.
Outside of music, Posner walked across the United States in 2019, clocking in more than 3,000 miles by foot alone. In June 2021, Posner climbed and reached the top of Mount Everest. Now, he's teaming with Clif Bar & Company to inspire musical movement in others.
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In a collaboration with Clif, Posner released a song titled “Amor Fati,” but you've got to listen to it on your mobile device by scanning the QR Code found at clifremixinmotion.com. There, you can listen to “Amor Fati,” but in order for it to play, you have to move your body. The more you move, the more the song changes, speeding up, slowing down, adding and removing insturments. You truly make the song.
"Clif Remix in Motion uses your smartphone’s accelerometer to detect motion," Clif Senior Brand Manager Blaire Woloz says. "As you move, you will unlock segments of 'Amor Fati' and two exclusive remixes. If you stop, the accelerometer will detect that you aren’t moving, and the song will wind down and remove instrument layers. As your movement picks back up, the song will build again. The Clif Remix in Motion experience will be the same for different types of movement, but you must keep moving—in whatever way brings you joy—to unlock the remixes and complete the experience."
We had the pleasure of sitting down with Posner to talk about this collaboration with Clif, his accomplishments, his music and more.
Does movement play a role in your creative process when making music?
For sure, I wouldn’t say explicitly, like not while I’m writing, but it’s a part of my daily life. Essentially, my job is to quiet the voice that’s always talking in my head and let wherever the ideas come from come through. Movement is a big part of that for me. I move pretty much everyday, whether it’s running or biking or yoga. Those seem to be my flavors of choice lately. That pipeline to wherever the ideas come from, it’s just cleaner when you’re healthy. It’s clearer and de-minded, and the thinking mind is more easily quieted when movement is a part of my life. Indirectly, it’s a part of my creative process. Sometimes, I get a lot of ideas while I’m riding or something, with the endorphins.
What was the journey like walking across the country in 2019? How did the idea come about?
The idea came about five years before I did the walk. I was visiting my friend Teeny in her jewelry shop in Los Angeles, and I just heard her say to someone that her friend walked across America. I was pulled into her conversation and said “What?” She said “Yeah, my friend just walked across America." I said “You can do that?” She said “I guess, he just did it.” I didn’t quite know it at the time, but my life was sort of already, in that moment, caught in a gravitational pull of the walk ... I started it myself five years after that moment.
The walk itself—it’s hard to put into a soundbite, in such a long journey, so much happening in six months and three days. Everything from beautiful, deep moments of ceremony on the Navajo Nation, to almost losing my life to a snake bite. It changed my life, on every plane: external plane like
Photography by: Courtesy Clif Bar
