Band:YEAH YEAH YEAHS Song/clip: MAPS
More than 80 million views on YouTube,
more than 152 million streams on Spotify
From YYY’s grand debut album FeverTo Tell released 20 years ago (29 April 2003).
Album artwork
Video: “The clip shows the band playing in an audition in a high school gymnasium, with different light filters changing the color of the room. Karen O’s crying in the video was not staged. She explains: “They were real tears. My boyfriend at the time (Angus Andrew) was supposed to come to the shoot – he was three hours late and I was just about to leave for tour. I didn’t think he was even going to come and this was the song that was written for him. He eventually showed up and I got myself in a real emotional state.”
Artwork: by art-punk musician and all around creative artist SSION.
SSION: “I had never used Photoshop before. I feel like that’s part of the reason that it looks
the way it looks. I just didn’t know what I was doing. At the same time I think that’s sort of what they were after. Karen sent me that movie Wild Style [Charlie Ahearn’s 1983 cult hip- hop film]. She was really into how when you go on the subway or whatnot, there’s tons of flyers on top of one another, and things get peeled away so there’s all these layers. It looks like beautiful, and trashy – it’s that feeling of New York. For me, it was something that’s retro.”
YYYs released a short film to celebrate the 20th birthday of that debut album.
Going back in sonic history looking for memorable albums…
27 April 2018
BAND: YEAH YEAH YEAHS
ALBUM: FEVER TO TELL – debut longplayer
RELEASED: 29 April 2003 – 15 years ago…
ROLLING STONE MAGAZINE wrote: “Karen O is one excitable girl. She’s the lead singer of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the guitar-drums-gal band whose debut full-length album, Fever to Tell, proves that the New York rock renaissance runs deeper and wilder than the Strokes. Show O a hottie, or just set her up with the tensile riffs that Nick Zinner on guitar and Brian Chase on drums sock out in unison, and she’ll whoop and shriek and wail and pant in paroxysms of true-believer rock & roll. It’s not roots rock. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs are closer to Siouxsie and the Banshees (but with a grin) and Led Zeppelin (but with estrogen) than to the blues, though they won’t pass up a good lick wherever they find it. Zinner places his guitar parts like a knife thrower, hurling single notes that leave wide-open spaces. Then he plunges through the middle with power chords. All the while, O moans and struts, having a fine time with old rock poses but using them to reach for something true. – Score: 4/5 – Full review here.
TURN UP THE VOLUME says : “A raw, garage and blues rock bolide speeding and burning fiercely with Karen O’s indomitable and howling vox fueling every single eruption on this flaming debut as if this was her last performance ever. Inflammable stuff all the way. Vicious score!”
THREE TOP TRACKS: Date With The Night / Maps / Black Tongue…
* DATE WITH THE NIGHT – savage midnight paranoia…
* MAPS – amplified passion…
* BLACK TONGUE – Boy you just a stupid bitch / And girl you just a no good dick…
Weekly firework to splinter Blue Mondays into a thousand pieces…
DATE WITH THE NIGHT is the mighty reckless track that got me into YEAH YEAH YEAHS instantly. An overpowering slam dunk from their early days when frontwoman Karen O had a very close relationship with her microphone. Here’s your kooky Blue Monday date…
