60 Songs That Explain the '90s - “Maps”—Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Episode Date: May 7, 2025

Rob heads back to Brooklyn to explore the 2003 indie-rock staple “Maps” and the history of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Later, he is joined by Niko Stratis to further explore the indie jam’s success. Host: Rob HarvillaGuest: Niko StratisProducers: Bobby Wagner, Jonathan Kermah, and Justin Sayles Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up, everyone? I'm Nora Prynciotti. And I'm Nathan Hubbard. And we're coming in like a wrecking ball to announce a brand new series. That's right. It's every single album, Miley Cyrus. Deep dive with us into the career of one of our most creative and confounding pop stars. We're starting, of course, with the best of Hannah Montana. And ending with her brand new album, Something Beautiful, in June. And don't forget about Miley Cyrus and her dead pets. We certainly will not be doing that. So listen now on Spotify or we're at, you get your podcasts. Just to briefly give you a sense of my vibe in college in the late 90s, just so you understand who you're dealing with and what people who dealt with me in college had to deal with. One time I sat in my dorm room and I read the book Bright Lights Big City in one sitting.

And then I listened to a Moby song called God Moving Over the Face of the Waters on repeat. and I cried for a very long time. Okay, Bright Lights, comma, big city is a novel written by Jay McInerney. It came out in 1984. It concerns a young gentleman living in peak 80s yuppie wasteland, New York City, and he is stumbling around and wrecking his life and snorting a North American mountain range of cocaine. Possibly he's snorting an even larger South American. mountain range of cocaine. That's about all I remember about this book. I should reread it

sometime. This dude ingests a truly heroic amount of cocaine and everything's great for a while but then later everything sucks. Right. And at the end of the book he has some sort of shattering cathartic personal realization and he stumbles outside and he takes his sunglasses off and he has to shield his eyes from the blinding sun. That's what I remember. If any part of that plot summary is inaccurate, then A, I doubt it, and B, too bad. Also, it's written in the second person, right? Like you, you, you, you are snorting a mountain range of cocaine. You are snorting a larger mountain range of cocaine. Hey, look over there. It's more cocaine like that. Whole book is like that. I'm in college and I sit down and I start reading and I can't stop and I read the whole thing.

That's not a flex or anything. It's a short book. I read slow and it would appear that I didn't have much else going on at the time. Reading a book in one setting strikes me as a cocaine-ish thing to do, possibly. And I say that in my capacity as someone who has, you guessed it, never tried cocaine. Never mind. People on cocaine don't read books. Sheesh. And finally, just to clarify, there is no connection, personal, artistic, or otherwise, between

the novel Bright Lights Big City and the Moby song. God moving over the face of the waters. No, I came up with that on my own. Hmm. So I guess in the moment, I just had a severe, overwrought emotional reaction to this book, and I just wanted to put on some music that I felt was conducive to having a severe overwrought emotional reaction. God Moving Over the Face of the Waters appears on Moby's third album, 1995's Everything is Wrong, though it is perhaps best known as the song that's playing at the end of the movie Heat, the super macho Michael Man crime epic Heat, also from 1995, starring Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. This Moby song is playing right at the end of heat when they go to the airport.

That's what I remember about the plot of that movie. At the end of heat, they go to the airport. Shout out Moby, huh? The plot summary of Moby's actual career is really something. at this point. Moby has written two cocaineish memoirs so far, and if we're not careful, he might write a third one to apologize for all the trouble he got in for the second one. But I will say that this Moby album, Everything is Wrong, is a phenomenal soundtrack to severe, overwrought super macho emotional reactions. There's another song on this record called When It's Cold I'd Like

to Die. And that song is playing at the end of that one super emo episode of the Supreme where Tony Soprano is at the airport, or at least that's how I remembered it. My long-suffering editor, Justin Sales, is a Sopranos superfan, and I just asked him about this episode. And he's like, Tony's not at the airport in that scene. He's in an office park in Costa Mesa. He's not even Tony Soprano. He's a solar panel salesman named Kevin Finnerty because Tony got shot and he's in a coma. And the theory is this is a Lynchian dream sequence depicting him in purgatory.

That's why his name now is Kevin Finity, Finity, Infinity, right? Justin is explaining all this on Slack. And meanwhile, I'm sitting here like, well, I did ask. We've all got our favorite shows. So let's say I'm ahead of my time in using Moby to soundtrack my own personal, severe, super macho, overwrought emotional reactions. That's the good news. The bad news is that I read this whole book, and then I put this Moby song on repeat, and I cry for a long, time and then I go over to my then girlfriend's house and I cry some more. And this behavior is

suboptimal from my perspective and also presumably from her perspective. I don't think I made her listen to the Moby song. That's the good news within the very bad news. But this moment, this collision of a random ass book and a random ass Moby song sent me into an emotional tailspin, which in turn reminds me of another musically induced emotional tailspin I experienced in the presence of this poor woman, which is when she played me this song, and I was suddenly more terrified than I'd ever been in my life. And let's not exploit this poor woman for content. So, very simply, I am in college. I have, occasionally, severe overwrought semi-macho emotional reactions to cocaine-based novels and or Moby songs

that I'm hanging out with a girl in a semi-romantic fashion, and the girl plays me this song. This is a cover of the kink song, I'm not like everybody else. It appears on the soundtrack to the 1996 Richard Linklater film, Suburbia. And this cover version is performed by the New York City garage rock band Boss Hog. Yes, boss hog like the Dukes of Hazard character. Jefferson Davis Hogg, the villainous small.

town Georgia County Commissioner in the Cornball 80s TV show, the Dukes of Hazard. I didn't know that Boss Hogg's full name was Jefferson Davis Hogg. Good grave. That is pretty on the nose even for the Dukes of Hazard, a jovially problematic CBS TV program in which two moonshine running brothers in rural Georgia own a bright orange Dodge charger called the General Lee with a Confederate flag painted on the roof. And then at the climax of every episode, there's a car chase, and they jump the General E over a creek or something. There's a freeze frame while the cars in midair and the narrator, who is Waylon Jennings.

Waylon Jennings jumps in and he goes, looks like the Dukes are about to. And then it cuts to commercial. We've all got our favorite shows. I loved that show. And as a little kid, I rode around the sidewalk in front of my house and my Dukes of Hazard Big Wheel. And I feel pretty weird about that. now I'm not getting distracted. You're getting distracted. This band is called boss hog. One G in hog in the band name, but two G's in hog in the TV characters name. That's interesting.

Is that interesting? This band is called boss hog and they're covering the 1966 kink song. I'm not like everybody else. And in college, a girl played this for me and it scared the shit out of me. I have never been more intimidated in all my life. I'm sitting there and this song is playing. at incredible volume, and I'm thinking, this girl is about to throw me out the window. Boss Hogg, the band, 1G, is led by New York City garage rock power couple Christina Martinez and John Spencer. John, of course, also serves as frontman for the John Spencer Blues Explosion. That's Christina Martinez singing and also terrifying me right now. John and Christina are married. I believe they're still married.

And they'd previously played together in an even trashier and scarier New York City garage rock band called Pussy Galore. But like, I don't want to say that band's name again. And you don't want to hear me say that band's name again. So, hey, forget about it. And this is a personal tick, a trope of mine, perhaps even a crutch of mine, both on this show and in real life, this superficial idea that I get super intimidated. if not outright petrified

when I encounter a screaming lady in her rock song. P.J. Harvey, Courtney Love, peaches, etc. But this specific real life moment, the three of us in this room together, me, this girl and boss hog, this is still a very amusing tableau

to me. How comically daunted I was by the delirious fury in Christina Martinez's voice as though she were pouring a full beer directly onto my head, as she sang this. Or, better yet, as though she were guzzling a full beer and then spitting it directly into my face. Or perhaps Christina is screaming this song while throwing a full beer at my head and

throwing it at my head all the way from New York City. I am crying and listening to Moby in my dorm room in Ohio. And from where I'm sitting and crying, New York City is a mythic, menacing, impossibly alluring garbage dump cocaine mountain wonderland that is both beckoning to me and warning me to stay away lest the city beat the crap out of me and this is new york city in the mid to late 90s right back when as the legend goes there were no great new york rock bands anymore there was no action there was no scene this is the dismal late 90s rock is dead moment that proceeds that necessitates the imminent early 2000's Rock is back moment. But Christina Martinez doesn't seem aware of the fact that Rock is currently dead.

And like, why don't you tell her? That song is called Ski Bunny. It appears on Boss Hogg's self-titled album from 1995. And that was Christina's bandmate and husband, John Spencer, creeping in right at the end there with some words of encouragement or with an uh of encouragement. because that's the other rad and baffling and miraculous thing about Boss Hog. The notion that uncouth, seething, fuck you type ferocity can coexist with domestic bliss, with love.

I love Boss Hog songs where John and Christina sing at the same time, when they sing not so much with each other as at each other, and the specific words they're singing at each other don't matter other other than the words, my baby. I got no idea what they're on about there. Either of them, really? Is he eating fish sticks? What?

Did he just say Oreo style? He probably didn't. I'm mishearing that, I presume. Don't worry about it. So that song's called Chocolate from the 2000 Boss Hogg album Whiteout. And the band doesn't put out another album until 2017. John and Christina have a kid, a son who is now a music. musician, an electronic musician himself. He records under the name No Face. Meanwhile,

Christina gets a job at Bon Appetit, the magazine, which is tremendously funny to me, and she and John stay married and they stay in New York City. And yeah, how heartening, how reassuring that is. To find out that fish sticks type garage punk ferocity can coexist with domestic bliss for decades for the long haul. Even in that mythic garbage dump cocaine, Cain Mountain Wonderland. They're almost normal people, but also reassuringly, they're never quite entirely normal people. When Boss Hogg reunited in 2017 for a new album called Brood X, I interviewed Christina Martinez for the ringer. And we talked about a song on that record called Sunday Routine, which was inspired by the New York Times column in which ostensibly interesting people reveal

their Sunday routines. And Christina says to me, quote, it's my favorite part of the newspaper. It's always largely the same. I wake up. I make coffee. I take the dog for a walk. I have my time by myself before the kids get up. And then I need to take them to the playground. And then we watch TV or we read a book. And then we go to bed. It's really like, oh my God, this is mind-bendingly stupid. You poor people. end quote. I love it. Christina Martinez reading about your Sunday routine and sighing and feeling sorry for you, I love it. It would appear she's not like everybody else. You don't stop being a rock star just because you've more or less stopped being a rock star.

But Christina said something else that really struck me, talking about New York City and rock stardom and lasting domestic bliss. She talked about Sonic Youth, the legendary and seemingly invincible New York City art rock band, formed in 1981 and led by a married couple Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon. And Sonic Youth have always been absurdly cool, even when New York City rock bands were allegedly not cool at all. This is a Sonic U song called Cotton Crown from their 1987 album, Sister. It is the rare instance of Thirst and Moore and Kim Gordon singing together. harmonizing together, albeit in a cool, tough New Yorker sort of way.

It's quite lovely. It's a pretty song. But in classic Sonic Youth fashion, it's not a normal people sort of prettiness. It's more a peak 80s yuppie wasteland New York City sort of prettiness. Keep your sunglasses on. So Christina Martinez also did an interview with a New York Times in 2017 when Boss Hogg reunited. And she talked about her band and her marriage. and she says, quote, Thurston and Kim inspired me when we first moved to New York.

They seemed to be a really solid version of what our lives could be. Reality sometimes shatters that kind of idea, though. And Christina is referring to the reality-shattering and mystery-shattering fact that Sonic Youth broke up in 2011, after a 30-year reign is the coolest and smartest and most invincible band on Earth, because Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon got divorced because Thurston had an affair. Kim published a memoir in 2015 called Girl in a Band, and she explains the breakup like this. Quote, the couple everyone believed was golden and normal and eternally intact, who gave younger musicians hope they could outlast a crazy rock and roll world,

was now just another cliche of middle-aged relationship failure, A male midlife crisis, another woman, a double life. End quote. Yikes. So when Christina talks to me about the Sonic Youth breakup and divorce, she says, simply, quote, it was very devastating. I felt personally betrayed, end quote. And I get that betrayal. And in a perverse, inappropriate, parisocial sort of way, I share that betrayal because I hear Thurston and Kim's voice.

together, even now, even on this song, and instinctively, I think, these are the two coolest people who ever lived, and of course they'll be together forever. I agree with both Christina and Kim that Sonic Youth, musically and domestically, was the model, the platonic ideal for tons of people, for aspiring rock stars and aspiring spouses alike. I had grown up in part on Sonic Youth, the band that helped get Nirvana signed to a major label, the band that personified noisy cerebral dissonance that still somehow sounded like pop music, the band that personified the daunting coolness of New York City

even in the years when New York City allegedly wasn't cool, rock band-wise. And yes, okay, I had grown up being very terrified of Kim Gordon. Yikes. This song is called Drunken Butterfly from Sonic U.S. 1992 album, Dirty, which was my first Sonic Youth album, and it's neither the best nor the coolest Sonic Youth album. But like, now you tell me, there I am at 14 in my teenage bedroom, deathly afraid that Kim Gordon's going to throw me out the window, and she's not even in the room with me.

That's another song from the Dirty album, released on Geffen Records, called SwimSuit Issue, inspired by a real-life sexual harassment suit filed against a big shot executive at Geffen Records. So Kim Gordon's memoir, Girl in a Band, is largely about exploring but also exploding that titular image, the myth, the cliched condescending what it's like to be a girl in a band question that she's been asked

constantly. Kim writes also about the marketing schemes embedded in that role. The major label machinations. When Sonic Youth first signed a Geffen, signed to a major, Kim writes, quote, It was then that we learned that for high-end music labels, the music matters, but a lot comes down to how the girl looks. The girl anchors the stage, sucks in the male gaze, and depending on who she is, throws her own gaze back out in the audience. Since our music can be weird and dissonant, having me center stage also makes it that much easier to sell the best. look, it's a girl. She's wearing a dress and she's with those guys.

So things must be okay. End quote. I feel like I'm disappearing. Getting smaller every day when I open my mouth to sing in every way. From the 1990 Sonic Youth album, Gooo, definitely a cooler record than dirty and possibly even better. That song is called Tunic parentheses Song for Karen, a very pretty and absolutely devastating song about Karen Carpenter and anorexia and celebrity and being a girl in a band and trying so desperately not to shrink in that spotlight. And Kim Gordon for decades has been the model for this

sort of unflinching empathy and intensity, for this sort of erudite vulnerability that also scares the shit out of some people. In Girl with the band, Kim says, quote, I also felt limited as a singer. When the band first started, I went for a vocal approach that was rhythmic and spoken, but sometimes unleashed because of all the different guitar tunings we used. When you listen to old R&B records, the women on them sang in a really fierce, kick-ass way. In general, though, women aren't really allowed to be kick-ass. It's like the famous distinction between art and craft. Art and wildness, and pushing against the edges is a male thing. Craft and control and polish is for women.

Culturally, we don't allow women to be as free as they would like because that is frightening. End quote. Kim Gordon has devoted her life. She's devoted her art and her life to exploding that cliche also. She is free. She is wild. She is occasionally frightening. And yet another reason she's the best is that thanks to her, sometimes seemingly only thanks to her,

New York City rock bands were never quite totally uncool, even in the allegedly moribund late 90s when rock was allegedly dead, and Kim Gordon helped keep the city warm. Keep it alive, keep it dangerous, while we all patiently waited until New York City was cool again, and rock was back. And then, suddenly, it was. Her name is Karen Lee Orsaleck, better known as Karen O.

Born in South Korea, raised in Englewood, New Jersey. Briefly, a student at Oberlin College in Ohio. Oberlin! Then she transferred to NYU, and she lived in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and started a rock band that would help save rock and roll and save New York City, and probably save some people's lives. This song is called, well, guess. And the demonic voice, the feral presence of Karen O., reminds me of another Kim Gordon, quote, a famous Kim Gordon quote that first popped up in a piece she wrote

for Art Forum in the 80s. Kim says, quote, people pay money to see others believe in themselves. Karen O started a band called Yeah, yeah, yes. Not The, yeah, yeah, yeah, yes. No, The, canonically, just yeah, yeah, yeah.

Their debut album called Fever to Tell came out in 2003. That song is called Tick. First time I heard this song, it scared me. just a little bit. You can find a photo of Karen O on the cover of journalist Lizzie Goodman's absolutely essential 2017 oral history, Meet Me in the Bathroom, Rebirth and Rock and Roll in New York City 2001 to 2011. Specifically, on the cover, Karen is on stage, holding a microphone, leaning back and spitting a majestic plume of, let's go ahead and presume it's beer straight up

in the air, illuminating the word. in the book's title, heroically breathing in the male gaze and gleefully spraying it all over the ceiling. That song is called Date with the Night. I believe the word Karen just screamed 16 straight times is choke. Did a few other bands help save rock and roll in the early 2000s? Oh, sure. The strokes, sure, sure. The white stripes, Interpol, the Hives, TV on the radio, LCD sound system, the rapture, the Walkman, etc.

Sure. many of those bands help save New York City as well. Sure, but there is no one human, one leader, one focal point, one artist, one genuine rock star, more electrifying, more mesmerizing, more volatile, more alive, and more capable of throwing you out a window than Karen O. This yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, song is called Black Tong, and that part works great as the hook, but it's not quite the hook, which, as it turns out, is just slightly more pointed.

And she contains multitudes. Carineau, as all truly great rock stars do. But nonetheless, when you first encounter this person, given all the screaming and beer spraying and tick, tick, ticking and choke, choke, choking, and you just a no-good dicking, you may not guess that Carineau is also the truest romantic of her Brooklyn rock star peer,

the most vulnerable, the most sentimental, the one most likely to write, the sweet child of mine, the every rose has its thorn, the living on a prayer, the alone, the kiss me deadly, the cotton crown of her generation. That's alone by heart. Till now, I always got by on my own. I never really cared. It's a great song. But Karen O reigned over the extra cool early 2000s iteration of New York City.

mythic garbage dump cocaine mountain wonderland and she made it beautiful and she believed in herself and she believed in love and she believed enough for all of us my name is rob harvilla this is the 17th episode of 60 songs that explain the 90s colon the 2000s and this week we are discussing maps by yeah yeah yes from their 2003 full-length debut album fever to tell in lizzie goodman's book meet me in the bathroom, which I cannot recommend highly enough if you've the slightest interest. And yeah, yeah, yeah, the strokes, the white stripes, interpol, the hives, TV on the radio, LCD sound system, the rapture or the Walkman, etc. In that book, Christian Joy, the costume designer and artist and close Karen O collaborator, best known for creating Karen's most iconic and flamboyant stage

outfits, Christian Joy describes the greatness of Karen O like this. Quote, I feel like a lot of girls, myself included, finally felt we had someone on stage we could relate to, someone who did not give a fuck in the same way we did and didn't mind being dirty and unsexy and was just being herself and was not a dude. I think we felt like we owned the moment. We would go to the shows and go absolutely bonkers in the front row. Karen was our fearless leader. We would come out of the show is absolutely covered in bruises, dirty and drunk. We were totally arrogant fuckers just like boys. It was the first time I felt I had women like myself around. End quote. It's going to bother me. Not playing the whole chorus to maps, isn't it? Yeah, it's bothering me.

Hold on a second. This has been bothering me. That's better. Thank you. Hmm. Interesting. A helicopter with a ringer logo has just landed on my front lawn, which suggests to me that I forgot to do an ad break. Shit. Ooh, that was close. It is theorized that maps, that the word maps is anagram for my Angus, please stay. Karen O wrote this song about her boyfriend, a fellow rock star named Angus, whom I personally dislike because he is taller than me. But that feels a bit galaxy-brained to me.

that theory. Also, this dude, this blogger named Brian Feldman, he's got a great tech-leaning substack called B-Net. Brian suggests that the My Angus Please Stay theory is one of those Wikipedia loop deals where somebody just throws an unverified bullshit fact on Wikipedia, and then credulous sources repeat the bullshit fact and cite Wikipedia, and then Wikipedia cites those sources as proof of the initial unverified bullshit fact, etc. Brian also says that briefly Wikipedia floated another theory that Maps is an oblique reference to garbage, to the great alt-rock band Garbage,

and their fantastic 1995 hit Only Happy When It Rains, because the line, They Don't Love You Like I Love You, appears word for word in the garbage song, Only Happy When It Rains. And Garbage lead singer Shirley Manson, speaking of phenomenal rock stars who don't give a fuck and aren't a dude

Shirley's full name is Shirley Patricia Ann Manson which is an anagram for spam which is Maps Backward This is a great theory The only problem there is that Shirley does not sing the words They don't love you like I love you

In the garbage song Only Happy When It Rains And also Shirley's middle name isn't Patricia I'm thinking of quitting the internet I'm serious I don't think that's logistically possible but I'm still thinking about it. Hit the deck.

As a fuck, comma, son, comma, you sucked, sings Karen O, repeatedly on a song called Bang, which kicks off

the first yeah, yeah, yeah's EP, which is self-titled and has five songs and lasts less than 14 minutes

and is released in July 2001, and it's sometimes called the master EP because on the cover, Karen is wearing a necklace that says

master. Yeah, yeah, yeah, consists of Karen O on vocals, Nick Zinner on guitar, he's a guy with a rad spiky rock star hair, and drummer Brian Chase, who does not have rad spiky rock star hair, and whom Karen O'Rin describes as Dorkasaurus Rex in that book, Me Me, in the Bathroom. Brian first met Karen at Oberlin, Oberlin College in Ohio by an order of magnitude is the most liberal, the most art-schoolish the most Brooklyn-esque physical location in Ohio.

Fellow famous Oberlin students include Liz Fair, Lena Dunham, Riannon Giddens, screenwriter William Goldman, Mark Cohn, the Walking in Memphis guy, and also Eric Bogosian, the actor and playwright, Eric Bogosian, whose play, Suburbia, became the Richard Linklater film, Suburbia. Oberlin! If you picture Ohio, the distinctly red state of Ohio, Imagine Ohio as the giant house from the Chronicles of Narnia. Then Oberlin is the one place.

It's the wardrobe in that house that transports you to another fantasy world with talking lions and whatnot. But then when you leave the wardrobe, you're back in, you know, Ohio. Forget it. Look out. That one's called Art Star. The screaming is very important to the Karen O experience. Her screams are life affirming. Karen and Brian meet at Oberlin, but leave Oberlin and reconvene in New York, in Brooklyn, in Williamsburg.

And they hook up with Nick Zinner and they start a band. This song, Art Star, introduces a core conceit of Yeah, yeah, yeah, is one of my personal favorite elements of this band, which is when Karen O sings along with a guitar riff. I love it. I had not previously regarded singing along with the guitar riff as genuine rock star behavior, but thanks to Karen O, now I do. Karen O sings along with the guitar riff in all the best. Yeah, yeah, yeah, songs. Talking to The Guardian in 2018, Karen says, quote, I had a dual personality as a kid. I was really shy with explosions of performance behavior, end quote. She also says, People expect me to be what they see on stage.

An extroverted, unabashed party in a bag. What they get is a mild-mannered, reserved, socially awkward woman. It would be hard to keep up the stage persona all the time. End quote. This duality. This idea of Karen as the person and Karen O as the persona is central to the yeah-ya-ya's experience. and in fact slightly predates the Yeah Yeah Yeah's experience. So first of all, in 2001, Rock was dead, but now Rock is back.

Yeah? Thanks to the strokes, et cetera. This is the legend. Was Rock dead? Was Rock in New York City especially dead in the mid to late 90s? Not entirely. Ask Sonic Youth. Ask Boss Hog.

Ask the John Spencer Blues Explosion. And ask this band Jonathan Fire Eater. Jonathan Fire asterisk eater. I don't know what the asterisk is about, but I dig it. Jonathan Fire Asterisk Eater is only around for five years, roughly 93 to 98, and they don't resonate much outside New York City, but everyone who sees this band live apparently loves them, and everyone loves Wildman, Frontman, Stuart Lupton especially. Here's a 1996 song called The Public Hanging of a Movie Star.

Stuart, I believe, is imitating a gorilla that escaped from the zoo. He's convincing, Stuart is, as both a rock star and an escaped gorilla. Karen O, in the Meet Me in the Bathroom book, she describes Jonathan Fire Eater like this. Quote, those guys had so much fucking Hutzpah sex appeal. They're these kind of scrappy, skinny, effeminate dudes, but just so fucking sexual. just primal sex oozing out of their pores. It was so awesome. End quote.

Got it. Another vital turn of the century in New York City institution, the shout parties. Shout exclamation point held on Sundays at bar 13 in Manhattan. DJ parties were young, tastefully, thriftily dressed indie kids would dance, literally actually dance to garage rock and whatnot. Karen says, quote, Just prior to getting on stage with Yeah, Yeah, Yeah's at the Mercury Lounge, where I kind of unleashed Karen O for the first time or whatever,

I was going to shout. My best friend and I would get there early, have like seven cosmopolitans, and be doing knee slides on the dance floor. The dance floor at Bar 13 became where I practiced this persona, end quote. Right, the Mercury Lounge, the first official yeah, yeah, yeah, show, where Karen O, Nick Zinner, and Brian Chase play together.

This show takes place at the Mercury Lounge on the Lower East Side on September 24th, 2000. The Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yes. Open for the White Stripes. We have reached the retroactive FOMO, the Ultra Cool, the I Was There portion of our program. The Mercury Lounge holds like 250 people. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, is debuting by opening for the white stripes. get out of town. You were either there or you weren't and you almost certainly weren't. I certainly wasn't, but this is where it all began. And by it, I mean all of it. Karen says she drank four or five margaritas beforehand to quell her nervousness. You can watch part of this show on YouTube.

Now, you want to hear some of it? The audio quality is decidedly not great, but the star power is nonetheless crystal clear. This song is called Our Time. You had to be there. In this clip anyway, it's not that Karen O is breakdancing or high kicking or juggling chainsaws or spitting beer at the ceiling or anything, but she just palpably radiates exuberance, radiates charisma, radiates rock stardom. Like the Supreme Court in obscenity, you know it when you see it. Rock stardom is exactly like obscenity, actually. In Meet Me in the bathroom, the famous New York City club doorman Thomas honorado, that's, That's a thing. He's a thing. Just trust me. There's a whole other book about him called Behind the Velvet Rope.

Legit famous New York City club doorman Thomas Honorado says, quote, that's one of the only moments in my life where I'll be able to say I was there. More so than any other time with a music artist, when I saw Karen O on stage at Mercury Lounge, I was like, oh, you're going to be famous. Oh, you've got it. I get it. end quote. Of course I'm jealous. I honestly cannot imagine being a young, drunk, hungry, starry-eyed rock and roll fan in New York City in the fall of 2000, elbow to elbow with 249 other super cool people at the Mercury Lounge with Karen O on stage in front of you singing, it's our time, our time, our time, our time to be hated. How exhilarating, how radicalizing that would be, and how true it would suddenly feel. It's our time. It would be true. Karen O would make it true

right in front of you. That's how rock stardom works. Also, Brian Chase, yeah, yeah, yeah, as drummer Brian Chase talking about that Mercury lounge gig, he says, quote, I'll tell you, what I remember about that first show. I remember that before I knew it, it was over. I'm not going to fake it tonight, dude. But I won't get on stage, you know, fucking, like, you know, at least one person that's fucking band to fucking understand that. And if you don't fucking understand that, fuck you, you know what I'm saying? And here we have Karen O conferring with her bandmates backstage during the Yeah Yeah's 2003 UK tour. This is from a half hour long documentary called There is No Modern Romance, which details in a grueling and quite intimate and mildly

disconcerting way how this band very nearly flamed out before they even blew up. This is 2003. The same year, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah's debut album, Fever to Tell comes out, but the album's not out yet. Maps is not a hit pop song yet. What's happening to this band hasn't even really happened yet. But Karen and Nick and Brian are already overwhelmed. already exhausted, already visibly sick of talking to journalists, already talking about canceling tours, already internally battling concerns that they're faking it. And really, if they don't start faking it,

if they keep meaning it on stage to such a frightful degree, then somebody's going to get seriously hurt. In The Guardian in 2018, Karen says, quote, the early days of yeah, yeah, yeah's were a self-destructive period of my life. I did some ridiculous masochistic stuff up on stage, like rolling around on broken glass and getting blind drunk. But it was highly cathartic, too.

I was subconsciously coping with the attention and the hype, which I wasn't prepared for. When I fell head first off the stage, I realized I had to rethink my whole stage thing. End quote. She fell off stage in Sydney, Australia, in October 2003, after draping her body over a monitor and then just clonking on down to the ground. I think the monitor fell off and almost landed on her. She sang a couple more songs and then they, you know, they stopped that show. And this current F-bomb heavy argument that we're listening to will end peacefully.

It will end with the three members of Yeah Yeah's Embracing Semi-Wormly and then they go on stage in front of a packed, sweltering, adoring crowd and kick ass. But you get a sense here of how many conversations, how many arguments like this are required to get these people to a place where they can join forces and kick ass. And if you listen carefully, you can hear Brian Chase banging on his shoes with his drumsticks the whole time Karen's talking. This band makes music even when they argue about why they're making music. If I don't fucking believe in it, I'm not going to fuck go out there.

This band is about fucking, you know, being real. You know what I'm saying? I'm not going to do anything I don't fucking believe it. and see a central theme of Meet Me in the bathroom is that when it comes to the New York City rock revolution the first bands and the coolest bands to bust down the door the strokes especially but yeah yeah yes as well they struggle enormously with fame with adulation with the media pressure with the crushing weight of their own myth it's the later the calmer the savvier bands that get super huge in a less taxing and more sustainable way, the killers, the Kings of Leon, even like

Vampire Weekend. There's a running joke in this book that starts when Yeah Yeah's are on tour with a John Spencer Blues explosion and they're constantly threatening to cancel shows or just show up and not play. John Spencer says, quote, we used to call them the maybe, maybe, maybes, end quote. And then later in the book, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, his own manager, Asif Ahmed, he says, quote, they started getting the nickname the no, no,

no's in the business. They would turn down a lot of stuff like SNL. They would turn down magazine covers. End quote. There is a volatility to this band. There is an arm's length hesitation. There is

the constant threat of total collapse. That's what makes them dangerous. That's what makes them world historically great. That's what brought rock back. But yeah, so anyway, then the first full yeah, yeah, yeah's album comes out. Fever to tell is released in April 2003 and kicks off with a song called Rich. This band has no bass player. Karano on vocals, Brian Chase on drums, Nick Zinner on frequently looped guitar, and nobody on base. And the no bass player thing doesn't feel as pointed or as stylized as it does with the white stripes, right? With the white stripes, it's philosophical and almost political in intent. It's

about sonic minimalism. It's about miraculously turning minimalism into maximalism. Whereas with yeah, yeah, yeah, it's more about creating a sense of somehow physical space, blank space. It's about the unlikely size of the container that Karen O's charisma can fill like a wondrous intoxicating gas. See what I mean about the screaming. She sings the words flesh ripped off and then she screams, but there's something so exuberant, so communal, so invigorating about her screaming. But also, she's not not terrifying, you know? Fevere to Tell is produced by Dave Setech, the band's Dear Brooklyn Friend. who is also a core member of TV on the radio

and other defining superarty this is our time Brooklyn band Fever to Tell is masterfully produced to sound like it's not really being produced at all it sounds like the band was recorded in your garage it sounds like the band is performing live in your garage right now and Karen is screaming whilst hanging upside down

from the ceiling of your garage like a carefully stored bicycle or a giant bat. Now it feels like a good time to mention that for all the comparisons, Karen O has drawn to P.J. Harvey and Susie Sue and Patty Smith and whatnot. The two singers who most influenced young Karen O,

according to Karen O herself, are Neil Young and Jeff Mangum from Neutral Milk Hotel. She likes her voices unconventional, overloaded with heart, and preferably very, very loud. You want another song where Karen sings along with a guitar riff? Sure you do.

Delightful. That song is called PIN, and it was the second single released from Fever to Tell. The first single was the one called Date with the Night, the extra screaming choke, choke, choke, choke, choke song. Yeah, in soon-to-be-classic maybe-mabies and no-no-nose fashion, the yeah-ya-ya-ya-ya's balked initially. at actually releasing as a single,

the super obvious zeitgeist-defining hit single off, Fever to Tell. In the Meet Me in the bathroom book, Jaliel Bunton, the drummer for TV on the radio, he says, quote, I remember when that record came out because Dave Satech produced that record and they played it for me. That was the first song of theirs that I was like, What Are You Doing? This is the single for the record. Dave said, no, they don't want to put it out.

I'm like, this is insane. I'm the dummy who likes the B-sides, whatever. But this song is the song. It is the fucking song. There's no doubt about it. And that record stalled until that song came out, end quote. And the song has to start like this. Maps has to start with 13 seconds of just this.

And then another 16 seconds of just this plus drums. This introduction is lengthy and indefinitely. indulgent and non-negotiable. It's a little something called setting the mood. You got to make a lot of noise first. Then you sculpt all that noise into the Taj Mahal. That's Maps, as in My Angus, please stay. According to Wikipedia and publications cited by Wikipedia for citing Wikipedia.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's did an early tour opening for John Spencer Blues Explosion alongside Liars. another Brooklyn Rock is back band with no thee in their name. Blires are led by Angus Andrew, Karen O's boyfriend at the time. Angus Andrew is, I'm not entirely clear on this. He's either eight or nine feet tall. One of those? I don't like it.

I don't appreciate it. I'm six four and I'm morally opposed to anyone being taller than me. It's excessive. It's rude. And now, a quick word from Angus Andrew, whose band has enough bass for two bands. Oh, get over yourself. That's too tall. All strutting around thinking you're the cat's ass.

So MAPS is a song about this guy. Maps is an all-caps L-O-V-E song in a spectacular New York City rock is back scene, not predisposed to straightforward L-O-V-E songs. We're not talking Subway, she is a porno, or girlfriends they can't understand here. Karen O, talking to Rolling Stone in 2006, she says, quote, there's a lot of love in that song,

but there's a lot of fear too. I exposed myself so much with that song, I kind of shocked myself. And until the chorus of maps, what conveys the love here, four O's in love, as quoted in Rolling Stone, what conveys the love is not the lyrics but Karen O's vocal tone, her stillness, her quavering solemnity, her relative calm, and the relative calm and shininess,

and the sudden arena rock grandiosity of the music, of the guitars and drums, of the noise itself. It would be fun to play the whole Fever to Tell record for someone who's never heard any of it, and to see if that person could pick out maps as the song immediately. It's relatively buried at Track 9, coming after a great deal of screaming and bashing and carrying on. And now, of course, with 20 plus years hindsight, MAPS leaps out at you and slaps you in the face, you know, lovingly. There is gargantuan, cool Brooklyn superstar noise, and there is normal person yearning in desperate vulnerability. The trick to being a rock star is to manifestly not be like everybody else, but to somehow articulate how, everybody else is feeling. It's the hour time, our time, hour time, hour time,

our time mentality distilled down to two people, the physical or psychic space between two people anywhere, even somewhere uncool. It is the journey from no, no, no to maybe, maybe, to yeah, yeah. In the Meet Me in the bathroom book, Karen O says, quote, we wrote it in Nick's room with a blue drum machine and a four-track recorder. I was really love Lauren at the time. They don't love you like I love you was straight from a love letter and I just plucked it out of there because I thought it had a good ring to it. Just a simple statement that really stuck with people. You know, I say love letter, but it was a fucking email. Motherfucker. You know what? I'm going to rewrite history right here. I wrote it with a quill.

It was a feather quill written in blood. It might as well have been. End quote. Karen has earned the right to be self-aggrandizing to self-mythologize the creation of this song because everyone around her in New York City at the time self-mythologized it too. That's what young people do. The journalist Joe Levy, a Rolling Stone editor at the time, he puts it this way. Quote, it's deeply romantic. Deeply romantic in a way that is not at all cynical. And this goes through some sort of current of New York rock.

It is in the Velvet Underground. It is in the Ramones. It is in that yeah, yeah, yeah, song. It's a sentimentality that has to connect through a sense of struggle and grit and fuck you. The song needs this part, too. The splashy symbols, the blaring riff, the caught breath of

the galaxies of empty space, the sky cracking open. Is that overwrought? Is that melodramatic? Of course it is. What do you think rock and roll? What do you think New York City as a cultural concept? What do you think young love consists of?

Overwrought melodrama. Also, you remember her crying, right? You remember Karen O. An unflinching close-up in the Maps video with a tear rolling down her face right about here, reportedly because her too tall boyfriend, Angus, was late to the video shoot. And then, before you know it, it's over.

What's over? The song, yeah. The fever to tell album is over. Well, yeah, soon, though Y Control is my second favorite song on that record. And that's track 10. The Karen O. and Angus Andrew Love Affair was over, eventually. Do I mean the early 2000s New York City rock and roll revolution was over? Yes, kind of, but that's complicated.

I moved in New York City in 2006, and it certainly wasn't over. But look, there is a palpable, and you might even say heartbreaking difference between seeing yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah's opening for the white stripes in front of 250 people at Mercury Lounge in the year 2000, and me seeing yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah's headline Radio City Music Hall in front of roughly 6,000 people in 2009. That was my first time seeing them, and it was different. It just was. It was a fantastic show, but it wasn't history. It wasn't an I was there situation. The line, They Don't Love You like I Love You, has all kinds of applications. See, it runs both ways. I don't love this band, the way someone living in Brooklyn in 2003 loved and presumably still loves this band.

My love is mediated by mythology, by distance, by an unattainable coolness I can only read about now. That doesn't make my love, your love, any non-New Yorkers love impure or irrelevant, it's just different. It's just that maybe we non-New Yorkers have more conventional Sunday routines. In 2009, Yeah Yeah, Yeah, as are promoting their third full-length album, It's Blitz, Exclamation Point, their dance record, their glitzy nightlife record, their best record if you want to be incendiary and possibly even if you're not trying to be incendiary. They're making a shrewd and open-hearted and reinvigorating sonic pivot,

the strokes, for example, never quite managed to make. But at the Radio City show, the song that really gets me is called Cheated Hearts from their second full-length album, released in 2006 and called Show Your Bones. What I remember is Karen O. jumping into the crowd, not violently. She's rethought her whole stage thing. She's no longer in her destructive, possibly falling off stage era. But Karen just walks around with her microphone and she sticks it in random people's faces and invites them to sing along with a guitar riff for a change. And it was super charming, right, because some people sang the riff perfectly. Woo. Woo. And some people got super shy and couldn't squeak out anything at all. But it was communal. It was egalitarian. It was collapsing

the distance between Karen O and her fans, between her myth and our reality. The woo was an echo. The whole Radio City show was an echo. For plenty of people who were there back in the day, the whole second yeah, yeah, yeah's album and really everything after the first yeah, yeah, yeah, show was just an echo. We missed it. We're right here, right now, but we still missed it. But Carineau is still singing like she's also crying, and like she knows that you might be crying too. Our guest today, we are thrilled to welcome back Nico Stratis, a critic podcaster and author of the book The Dad Rock that made me a woman, which is out on May 6th. Nico, it's wonderful to see you again. So nice to see you again.

The last time I saw you, you were in my city, in Toronto City. I was, I was, and it's a beautiful city from what I could ascertain being there for 48 hours total. That's the best length of time to spend in Toronto. Yeah, you did. There we go. All right. I nailed it. I know they're not in your book, but in honor of your book, to start out, are yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, canonically, dad rock?

Canonically, I feel, I'm glad that you put canonically in there, so now I can be canceled for this. I'm saying yes. Okay. My definition of dad rock was like, I left it intentionally vague in the book so that people were forced to ask me about it. But I'm saying that they are primarily for the song we're going to, for maps, for the song we're going to talk about today, which I think is a dad rock hit that people wouldn't necessarily think when they think about dad rock, which is why I'm working to change people's perception of the genre of the loose genre. Okay. Okay. So what are the elements of dad rock in maps, you know, that are maybe not being identified as such by a plurality of people who think about dad rock? Like what's obviously dad rock about this song

and what's more subtly dad rock about this song? Like when people say dad rock, they're not like, it's always kind of a pejorative, right? They're never like, oh, I really like this dad rock record. They're writing about Wilco's Sky, Blue Sky,

blue sky being a dad rock record and then having to apologize for three years later. Shout out Robert Mitchum, yes. Yeah, exactly. Who is, whose name dropped in my book specifically for that moment. You know, the thing with Maps is that like,

it's so earnest. Like, the earnestness is really painful, and it feels very earned. It feels very real, and it feels very lived in. Like, it's an earnestness. You can feel like there's two ways to approach this sort of, like, confessional songwriting,

where a lot of it feels like a performance, and some of it feels like, oh, you can't help, but just, like, sort of let this bleed out of you, and you're letting this out as a lesson. And that's sort of what MAPS feels like to me is, like, so much of it is, this is just the way that I'm feeling

and I can't control it. And I'm just trying to share this with you so maybe, you know, that you can understand how I'm feeling and you can sort of, you can base your own feelings off of that and maybe we can all grow together. And that's kind of part of it for me. Life lessons is a big part of it. And failure is a big part of dad rock. Failure. Okay. Do you get, do you get a vibe of failure off maps? Does it strike you as a song about an ultimately doomed but beautiful but doomed relationship? Kind of. It's got that real feeling of like, you know, like when you're involved in something and you know in your heart of hearts that it's probably not going to work out, but you're really desperate to hold on because you just need you just need a win so badly. And it kind of feels like that. Like, I mean, the line where they don't love you like I love you feels desperate and earnest and real and just like, I mean, everybody's kind of, I think it's why so many people gravitated to this song is like, who hasn't felt like that? Right, right. I'm trying to situate it in the rest of the record

like obviously it's their signature hit it's a huge song you know and just in terms of streams or popularity it's gonna stick out on fever to tell

but tonally do you get the same vibe you know the earnestness the openness the sentimentality you know does this song

stand apart on the record for other reasons other than like it's hugeness kind of because it's towards the end of the record

right? And it's right before Y Control, which is like very kind of like, Y Control is kind of a similar song, but it's very different, right? It's like Maps feels like you're out, you've been at a party, like taking the record in as a whole. MAPS sort of feels like the moment you're outside and you're having a cigarette on the patio and the party is still happening inside. And you're like, I just need a moment away from everything to sort of gather myself and maybe have a little cry. And then I'm going to go back in and I'm going to party some more, but I'm going to be partying with a deeper sadness in my heart, which is where Y control sort of comes in.

And it kind of feels like it fits the flow of that record, right? Which is a record that really kind of goes places. It's not, the Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, is one of those bands where I think if you only ever heard Maps, you're like, oh, they sound like Maps. And you're like, not really, though.

Like, Maps is kind of the only song they have that sounds like that. That's a beautiful way of looking at it. Leaving the party and then going back into the party is the Maps to Y control transition. really dig that. That makes a whole lot of sense to me. So thank you for that. I like a song that you can smoke a cigarette, too. As a person who's no longer allowed to smoke cigarettes, I like a cigarette smoking song. Maps kind of feels like it.

Sure. Vicariously, what are the qualities of a cigarette smoking song? Is it necessarily like a sentimental sort of ballad thing, you know, or there is sort of an openness and earnestness? Like, what is the signature quality of a cigarette smoking song? I think it's a pause, right? Like, it's whenever the action feels subdued a little bit and not like non-existent. It's when you're sort of taking a beat. Like there's an Otis Redding song, coffee and cigarettes that is very much like that where it's like, okay, everything is calm now, but we're still kind of alive, but alive in a different way. And that's what is a cigarette song to me.

That's my second book. I was going to say, we're basically writing your second book here, which is very convenient. Yeah. We were talking before, and you mentioned TV on the radio, and there's the direct connection. Of course, Dave Satek produced Fever to Tell. But did you hear from the beginning a direct kinship between TV on the radio and the yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, is there a distinct Brooklyn sound to you even back then, even here in like the early to mid-2000s? To a degree, I mean, TV on the radio, another band.

Like if you were to hear Wolf like me, you would say like, well, that's what TV on the radio sounds like. And again, it's like, well, not really, though. Like, kind of no. like sure but but also not at all and like I think there is a few bands you know like from such a removed outsider's perspective you know um I in my I'm 42 years old at this point I've still never been to Brooklyn ever in my life I have no idea what it's like okay I wouldn't I don't go now I think yeah it's it's it's fine yeah now's not the greatest time but it sort of feels like like in my head when I conjure Brooklyn it is kind of this idea that was

created by bands like this, right, that sort of feel like there's a bit of an artistic element that's a bit grimy, but not like grimy in a scary way, but just like grimy in kind of a punk rock way, but like a punk rock art, like a punk house that's, yeah, kind of, like a punk house that's also like an art pop up, like in its own way, you know, like there's a grittiness to it, the texture feels like it's part of it. And it stands a field of a lot of bands of this era, which are all kind of doing different things, right? So it didn't. I was going to ask you, you know, as an outside, or you're in Canada, I'm in Ohio. Like, did it make you want to go to Brooklyn?

Was it like an aspirational song where it's like, I think about myself as a teenager listening to, you know, Pearl Jam and wanting to go to Seattle physically, right? Did you get any sort of vibe like that, you know, did you want to go to Brooklyn or did you just get a sense of Brooklyn, but it's fine to just live vicariously through these bands? Yeah, I mean, it really did. You know, like this album came out.

Yeah. I think 20 something years ago. I was 20, I think, when this record came out maybe or something like that. You know, like, I'm 42 now, so it feels like sort of right around when it came out. And like, I like really did sort of, it did really make me feel like I wanted to be somewhere bigger than I was, I was living in the Yukon, you know, like the most, when people talk about the Yukon, they use it as a euphemism for the most removed from society you can be. The least Brooklyn-like place on earth, right. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

We were there like, we were their polar opposite in every way. And I was like, I do kind of want to go to this place where it feels like everybody's always kind of a little high and a little drunk, but everybody's having a good time. And like, at the time, I was still doing both of those things. And I really did kind of want to be part of it because it just felt so fantastic. Like, it feels like the sort of place you would walk away from with a million stories. And I was really sort of craving that at the time. And I would feel very different now.

But definitely when I was younger, I was like, well, get me in the room, you know? I just want to sort of be there. I want to be flying the wall for this. So we talked a little bit also about like the earnestness, the sentimentality. of maps, you know, versus like the posturing, the irony, like the deflection of the strokes or losing my edge or whatever. Like, did the yeah, yeah, yes, fit in for you with the perception of, like, the early 2000s, like Rock is Back, New York City bands, you know, LCD sound system, you know, the strokes, whoever, or is the appeal of this band that they stand apart a little bit? And there's

something a little more sentimental and open about the yeah, yeah, yes. I think they do. I think they do really sort of stand a field of a lot of that stuff. And like, I have such a skewed perception because we've gone so far from that era now that in my head what was like of what was the scene at the time is probably different than what it really was 20-something years ago. But like they do, you know, there is that sentimentality and also, you know, like thinking of a band like the strokes, like the strokes are kind of doing one thing and they're doing it well, but they're kind of doing that one thing over and over again, which is like the yeah, yeah, yeah's and like And TV on the radio and bands of that ilk are like from the get-go, they were sort of exploring their sonic environment.

And they were trying to sort of push it in different ways. On a single album, they're not sort of staying in the same lanes. So it kind of does feel a little bit different. And I think it's why they have a little bit more staying power too is because they're experimenting from the get go and sort of trying to see, well, where can we take this within the confines of a single album? And where does that grow to? And who do we grow into as we get older? Right, because I, you know, they don't get another maps. Yeah, yeah, yeah, as don't. But like it's Blitz, the third record, which is like a synth pop record, which is like a dance record. You know, it's like a hard pivot, but it's definitely a pivot. You know, like there's more variety and therefore I think more longevity to yeah, yeah, yeah, is that a lot of people who might have been slightly bigger than them, you know, when they all first started. sure yeah and i mean like everybody's got something to grasp onto too with a van like that right like

you know with its blitz there was that like heads will roll remix that like a track or somebody did and you know i've been to a lot of dance parties where that song gets played and it's the only yeah yeah yeah yeah song that dj knows and it's like right everybody has their own entry point because there's so many different places to get on board where in like you know the strokes or a band like that i'm like really hammering on the strokes and i don't know why but like a band like that it's like well you're getting in the same road what everybody else is, you know,

or even like Spoon or a band that was sort of coming up at the same time. It's like, well, everything's kind of the same. Like, it's guitar rock. Like, it's different guitar rock, but it's all kind of the same thing. No, I know what you mean.

Like, I love Spoon, but like there's a consistency to Spoon, you know, every record is a little different, but there isn't a stark pivot, you know, the way its Blitz feels, you know,

and that's why I think I love its Blitz so much that it's somewhat at least surprising. It is surprising. Like, when that record came out, I was like, oh, this is what they're doing. Like, this is sort of like talking about like TV on the radio, you know, like seeds that came out what in like 2014 or something. That was a departure for them too, right?

And it is interesting to be like, well, how are they changing as we all get older? You mentioned to me, you know, the fakeness of a lot of indie rock at the time. You know, were early 2000s rock bands, were they trying to be real and direct and it just didn't sort of work for you? or did it seem to you like everyone was trying to be a little artificial, a little arm's length, you know, and what made maps stand out was how earnest, how open,

how vulnerable it was? Yeah, I mean, everybody's kind of trying to be cool in this era, right? Like, you know, and even when they are sort of being earnest,

it's that sort of like pretending to be earnest. So somebody will like pay attention to how sensitive you think you are, or like you want them to think that you are. And like, you know, you think about the music video for Maps. She's crying. And it feels real.

And you're like, okay, well, this is different. This is emotionally vulnerable in a very different way, right? And you can sort of feel it from the get-go. And a lot of this era is so much posture. And it is so much like, well, we're cool. Like, rock and roll is back and we're cool now. Like, look at our leather jackets that are one size too small and all of this. And, like, Karen O is cool as hell.

But, like, cool in such a different way, right? Like, such a captivating person who is always. sort of exploring what it means to be a person on stage, especially a woman on stage, which is not super common in this era either. Like a lot of dudes are playing rock music in this years, which is not surprising. Not like every other genre has like.

The return of men, finally, finally. Yeah, except finally men get a chance to be on stage. Yeah. I was curious about your take on her stage presence, like immediately, especially in the beginning, Right? Like she said, like she was so wild, you know, and she drank so much and she's rolling around on the floor and broken glass and throwing herself around. Like there's a little bit of Kirk Cobain and there's a little bit of Courtney Love. Like is that volatility sort of a necessary component of rock stardom? Like it didn't, does that maybe make Karen one of the best rock stars of her era? I want to say no because I don't want to, in my heart of hearts, I don't want to believe that's true. But it's totally true. Like, you know, she's such. a captivating person and she's

so you you want somebody who you kind of never know what they're going to do right like a lot of front people are very predictable in their stage and that's fine like there's a place for that I just went to see craft work a couple weeks ago and like look you know what you're going to get when you go see craft work pretty pretty regimented right

it's pretty put together but like Karen O it's kind of just like well we don't know who she's going to be or what she's going to do or what's going to happen and that volatility sort of feeds into it And it is kind of the spirit of like being a rock and roll front person is the danger of it. Like, and not to say that she's dangerous. There's any danger present. It's just like that volatility sort of breeds this sort of danger that you're all sort of chasing.

It's like getting a tattoo in a moving vehicle. Like you kind of want to experience it just wants just to know how it feels. Jackass did that once, right? Didn't they get tattoos while Henry Rollins was driving a van? Yeah, in a van. They're like off-roading. That wasn't the first Jackass movie. I think, yeah.

Yeah. So there you go. That's basically the experience of seeing, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's live in the early years right there. I mean, you also never know what she's going to wear, right? Like, especially in the beginning. And maybe that's more of a through line now. It's like, you know, the Christian Joy outfits, you know, are synonymous, you know,

with Karen's early years especially. And, you know, I think about, like, there's that one album cover. I think it's mosquito that, like, everybody doesn't like. Like, they, this band has really interesting, really weird. you know, occasionally pretty polarizing album covers even. Like, what do you make of this band's visual style? Well, you know, there's an artistic element to it. You know, there's a, especially with Karen,

there's a fashion aspect, but like Nick Zinner too, like there's very much a lot of these bands sort of had whatever uniforms or what have you. And they sort of had this, like, this is an extension of their artistic expression is, you know, how were they presented on stage? What does the album art look like? Is there a bit of contrast there?

That mosquitoes cover, which I agree, I don't like it. But part of it, I'm not supposed to necessarily like it. I don't like the It splits cover with the egg being squeezed. Like, it's not for me, you know. It's weird. Yeah, yeah. I don't know what they're going for there. But that's what makes them cool, I guess.

But it makes me think about it, right? And that's part of it. Well, sure. Right, right. You remember it. Yeah. And you want to think about it. You want to talk about it later.

You want to have something to sort of discourse. about that's like kind of real that is like okay well you know what was she wearing what does that mean what is this in reflection of what is this sort of say about this era we're in like you know there's not a lot of people that are like using fashion on stage like that uh anymore and it's sort of nice to have this person that is really sort of making a concerted effort to do so uh i'm curious if you think that maps has been specifically influential like i think about lcd sound system right like you go from losing my edge, which is this really arch, you know, and self-aware and cool songs, like all my friends, which is this beautiful, cathartic, you know, anthemic song, you know,

that is always kind of twins are sort of associated in my mind with maps. There's a similarity there a little bit. Like, do you think that any other 2000s bands like explicitly tried to write their own maps or all my friends, you know, were people going for this once they saw that the yeah, yeah, yeah, yes could do it? I don't know. I don't know. I I'm like trying to think and like there's not a lot of other bands that are coming to mind that are doing that because it's

it's not a thing you can fake and I think a lot of what was happening was just sort of the veneer of reality or whatever and I think this sort of rawness that's sort of lingering in maps is a really hard thing to produce it has to be real or it can't be and there's just so much of that phoniness

and like LCD like it's funny to think of maps as a bridge for LCD sound system but like yeah it is i don't know if i'm just making that up i might be i like this theory though and i can't wait for your book that's all about how maps is sort of like the through line for all of early 2000s indie rock scene i feel you've done the 90s book you've got to do the 2000s book and i feel like the book just has to be like they don't love you like i love you i'm going to work on that right after we're done talking sounds great well and there's like i think there's stuff that comes out of this song too but i don't know if anybody's ever like we're going to have

of our own maps. And I could be wrong. And I'm sure I'll get off and I'll be like, oh, you know what the song is. But, you know, it's not really coming to me. Like, can you think of one? Not really. You know, like block party, like this modern love. Like, I don't know if there's one block party song, but I think there is a yearning of vulnerability.

Like there's a through line there. I think, you know, but not at this scale. It's hard to think of another song, you know, that triangulates like being this huge, you know, and being, you know, this. purely romantic, I guess, is the way that I've always thought about. It's sort of after an era of this sort of song, too, right? Like, you know, thinking of the, I was about to say, like, a Michelle Branch or a Vanessa Carlton or whatever, like that era is done and dusted, and now we're in this cool era.

And for somebody to do this sort of very raw, vulnerable song that hits so big, this kind of song wasn't necessarily what was, like, dominating charts and whatnot at the time. People were sort of looking for more upbeat party tracks. So to do this more like pulled back. song is really kind of a landmark. Just to wrap up, something I didn't know until recently, I guess, is that Maps was a very explicit

inspiration for since you've been gone. Like, that makes a lot of sense now that I think about it. You know, and I sort of instinctively avoid that because of the Dr. Luke of it all. But, like, when I think about, there's a pretty direct structural connection between maps and since you've been gone. And of course,

you know, fast forward a few years in Lemonade, Beyonce's Lemonade has like, didn't the Vampire Weekend guy like help write, you know, the interpolation of maps on being, like, just the, the roadmap here is baffling, but like, is maps a bigger influence almost as a pop song than it is as a rock song? I think so. I mean, there's a structure there, right?

Like, the since you've been gone thing is funny because, like, I think he has since got synch of doing it, but there was that famous video of, like, in the early age of YouTube, where Ted Leo did a medley of maps into since you'd be gone and sort of showed how. those two songs work so perfectly together. And like, uh, it is kind of this blueprint that, because there is like kind of nothing like it.

And I think when you're so unique and you stand so far, I feel from everything else, it's really easy to take that away and be like, right, this is the thing we want to do because everything else is just sort of this huddled mess of similarity. But here's this one thing that stood out. So how do we take some lessons away from that?

And how do we build off of the, this unique structure that's over here, you know? And, and you're right. it is sort of this building block pop song that is maybe getting to be a little bit on the song as the a as the arias go by. But still, it's one of those songs where like if you say, Wade, they don't love you like I love you, people know exactly what you're talking about. And like that's a pretty rare thing for a pop song.

Of course, just to have one line, you know, one hook that resonates like that. It's a very different thing from having just a hit song. That's a different quality. Well, thank you so much, Niko. It's always awesome to talk to you. really appreciate it. Oh, thank you. I'm so happy to be here, so happy to be talking about this song. This is the highlight of my life.

All right. Likewise, thanks so much. Thanks very much to our guest this week, Nico Stratis. Thanks to our producers, Justin Sales, Jonathan Kerma, and Bobby Wagner. Thanks so much to Olivia Creary

for additional production help, and thanks so much to you for listening. And now, Why don't we all go listen to Maps by Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. We'll see you next week.