Lyrics: On You Tube
The first of a few songs in this mix that have been a part of previous compilations! The last time we had the Yeah, Yeah, Yeah's on a mix it was about a year ago and they were in the running for a Grammy Award for the album that this song (as well as Heads Will Roll) comes from. As it turned out, the album that the song that came before theirs on that mix won that Grammy (Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix by Phoenix), so they didn't come home with the hardware this time around. No matter. The Yeah, Yeah, Yeah's already had a Grammy, for the song Maps, and the critical acclaim just keeps landing in their laps with SPIN magazine and NME both naming this song as the best track of 2009.
What I found most interesting about this song (other than it's catchiness!) is the number of ways that the lyrics could be interpreted. You can read some of them at the bottom of the lyrics link provided above. It's a prime example, I think, of how lyrics at first glance see to be so obviously telling a certain story until another perspective is applied and suddenly the flexibility of our language creates many possibilities! The interpretation I like is the one relating to the progression of being an unknown "nobody" to growth in self-confidence, but there are others that are intriguing as well. I did a little looking to find out what the band's thoughts were, but didn't see anything that jumped out to tell me what that was!
The band is from New York City, but the video for this song was shot at locales in San Francisco, including the "Cool Super Discount" grocery store, though shots from San Fran's famous Chinatown are also included. I liked the beginning, where singer Karen O looks like she's prepping to go out on stage for a performance, then goes through the curtain and out onto a San Francisco street. Sort of a play on the Shakespearean "All The World's a Stage" idea?
The end of Sept, 2010 marked the 10-year anniversary of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs first-ever show which was in a small club in New York City. The band apparently wound up playing an anniversary show in a small club (called Secret Market Project, I think) to commemorate their beginnings at a cost of $20 a ticket!
No news that I could find on the band's next album, though the band is currently not on tour leading me to guess that they are not only in New York (since they just did their anniversary concert) but perhaps back in the studio to work on the next release. Just a guess, though!
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