Yeah Yeah Yeahs have helped define the indie rock music scene in New York City, and their name is entrenched in the culture of the city.
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Karen Lee Orzolek (known as Karen O), Nick Zinner and Brian Chase welcomed the new millennium by forming what would become one of the most famous indie rock bands of all time. With Orzolek on lead vocals, Zinner on guitar and keyboard, and Chase on drums, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs formed in 2000 in New York City. The band’s roots stretch to Ohio, where Orzolek and Chase met while attending Oberlin College. When Orzolek transferred to New York University, she met Zinner at a local bar. The two soon formed a duo that leaned more acoustic until they decided to become a punk band, akin to the ones Orzolek was exposed to at Oberlin College. After Chase moved to Brooklyn, he joined the band as the drummer that became Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
Meaning Behind the Band Name
Orzolek and Zinner came up with the name and logo before they’d ever written any songs for the band. “One night, we were drinking at a bar brainstorming names for a band all night long and then Nick overheard a couple next to us conversationally saying ‘oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s great, yeah, yeah, yeah,’” Orzolek recalls of the origins of the name during the Yeah Yeah Yeahs performance on Live! from Central Park SummerStage in 2004.
“I think it’s a New York City sort of reaction to everything,” she continues. “You’ll hear it all the time here for some reason. It’s good. It works for us because it can go either way as more ‘yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s great’ or ‘yeah, yeah, yeah.’”
Yeah Yeah Yeahs proved to be a force to be reckoned with when their debut album, Fever to Tell, dropped in 2003. Having built a solid reputation around their electric live shows, the album earned critical acclaim and the hit “Maps,” which reached the top 10 on the Billboard Alternative Airplay chart. Fever has since sold more than one million copies worldwide. This set the stage for their even more successful sophomore album, Show Your Bones, which debuted at No. 11 on the Billboard 200 in 2006 and top 15 hit lead single, “Gold Lion.”
“When we started the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, it was at a point in New York where we weren’t very interested in anything that was happening music-wise and wanted to rock the boat a bit,” Orzolek expresses of their initial intent, right before the hype around the NYC music scene. “[There was] a lot of really eclectic bands coming up and we came up with that.”
Yeah Yeah Yeahs also released It’s Blitz! in 2009 and Mosquito in 2013, the latter of which hit No. 5 on the Billboard 200. Their latest album, Cool It Down, was released in 2022.
Photo by Kevin Winter/FilmMagic
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