2002 - wait!

Yeah Yeah Yeahs, 'Maps'

I had a very strong emotional reaction to ‘Maps’ when I’d first seen the video, and it was more than a feeling of what Scott Steiner called ‘sympy’ for its singer. The pain laid bare in what looks like my sixth-form college sports hall, accompanied by washes of TV studio lighting, and two art school blokes with crap haircuts.

I think I underestimated the emotion that this song was capable of gut-punching me with, based on what had gone before.

Vocalist Karen O puts in an impassioned performance on the track as the narrator urges caution – an assured plea for the other that the affection they’re receiving from adoring crowds is a different, less authentic kind – albeit one that might feel more real given their distance. (Karen O’s then-significant other was in a different band, so presumably there wasn’t much in the way of meaningful face time.)

The song coming from a place of such insecurity, for me, is what gives it the real feels throughout. Even more so within the opening moments, when the wire-thin guitar line tries to bob and weave through the chest-pounding faux confidence of the drum bursts. It’s like the delicate seed of a feeling inside is trying just to survive against the sense that you ought to just shut up and get on with it.

So the story goes, Karen Orzolek and drummer Brian Chase met at a famous “private liberal arts college” in Ohio, before transferring to New York and meeting guitarist Nick Zinner, who studied at a different famous “private liberal arts college”. Would it also blow your mind to find out their local ‘scene’ was Williamsburg, Brooklyn? No, didn’t think so.

I’m almost positive my introduction to the band was the brash, bold siren’s call of ‘Date with the Night’. I watched the video earlier to refresh my memory (another 2am MTV job back in the day, I reckon), and it’s all as I remembered: awful jump-cuts, blurry close-ups and zany onstage antics, particularly from Orzolek, verging on performance art. (The one “audacious” bit of frontwoman-ery I really remember was the ‘bite down on the microphone, take your hands off and wail’ part of the video. I’d been advised against the same mic technique for my brief foray into stand-up comedy during my student days but hey, I’m easily swayed.)

Even aged 17, I could spot ‘American art school’ from a mile away – with all the doubt that brought. The song and video together are, to put it mildly, a migraine. Not that it was rubbish (although, meh) but I don’t think the overall package was presentable enough to make me sit up and take notice against my contemporary punk rock backdrop. When it came to my tastes, the songs I played most were rougher, the video budgets even lower, but that is the price you pay for authenticity versus...whatever this rough ‘n’ ready effort was supposed to present.

So with all this in mind, when I saw the video for ‘Maps’ for the first time, I had a hard time believing it was the same band. The tone, much more mellowed out; the video, given time and space to breathe; the haircuts, still awful. The song itself, coming from a much deeper place and having so much more to say. The authenticity shining through, and a frail vulnerability powering the song through soaring highs and crashing lows. It’s just gorgeous.

I think the moment in the video that really sealed it for me, the first time round, was when we’re coming back from the first big release of drums and guitar, and back towards another breathless chorus, when it all seems to catch up with Karen O, and a tear runs down her cheek before she raises her microphone again. It’s possibly manufactured, but god it looks sincere – and it’s another squeeze on the feels that you didn’t realise had already been clutched 90 seconds before.

I don’t quite know what the management and/or label were thinking, releasing two such strikingly different singles from the same band. You want your first few singles to set the same tone, right? But it turns out the UK went for this release months before the US caught up – I assume, once the song had caught on here then there was no risk in going for it elsewhere.

But there’s certainly more than enough risk in the song itself – a true artistic statement from some art school students that grabbed me from the moment the drums begin pounding their plea for attention.