Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Yeah Yeah Yeahs

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Essential Albums

  • Fever to Tell
    Fever to Tell
    Fever to Tell

    Karen O once described the feeling leading up to Fever to Tell as being like a cowboy in a Western getting dragged by a mustang while his boot was still stuck in the stirrup: On the one hand, you’re the hero; on the other, the horse is in charge. It’s a neat metaphor in part because it captures the tension of the music itself. Where fellow turn-of-the-millennium New York City bands Interpol and The Strokes sounded (and looked) like four or five guys operating in unbreakable unison, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs sounded (and looked) like three people continually yanking each other toward opposing corners of the mat with an energy so barely controlled you’d hold your breath wondering if they could make it through without falling apart. On their debut full-length album, you could hear aspects of disco (“Y Control”), blues-rock (“Man”) and other sounds that generally privilege the immediacy of the body over the digressions of the mind. (“Cold light/Hot night/Be my heater/Be my lover,” Karen O sings on “Cold Light”—it’s that simple.) But at the heart of the album was the sense of a band that could fill arenas if they wanted to and could manage to avoid the falling apart, while still retaining a bone-thin ferocity that hadn’t touched the mainstream since Nirvana. And in Karen O, they had a primal, magnetic lead vocalist whose raw power seemed driven in part by the shock that she had it in her in the first place. Then there was “Maps”, which connected the dirt and noise to concerns as transcendently romantic as Billie Holiday or Elvis singing “Blue Moon”. Written for her then-boyfriend, Angus Andrew of Liars, Karen O later described it as a love song she wanted everyone to hear. She got her wish.

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About Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Rock ‘n’ roll gained another life when the Yeah Yeah Yeahs stepped onstage for the first time in 2000 at New York’s Mercury Lounge. The scene: Nick Zinner attacking a reverb-drenched guitar, Brian Chase thrashing at the drums and Karen O, a thrillingly primal presence, wailing like her—and everybody’s—existence depended on it. It was the dawn of NYC’s great ‘00s rock revival, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were arguably the rawest, most magnetic band of them all. “The Yeah Yeah Yeahs were born in troubled times,” Karen O tells Apple Music. “It’s kind of our comfort zone.” That fortitude has always been at the root of the trio’s sound, starting with the fiery garage punk of 2003’s Fever to Tell—featuring instant indie classic “Maps”—through to the dizzying disco rousers of 2009’s It’s Blitz! and the transcendent synth-rock anthems of 2022’s Cool It Down. With their delicate balance of grit, glam and fragility, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs have inspired a new century of rock innovators.

ORIGIN
New York, NY, United States
FORMED
2000
GENRE
Alternative

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