If you’re just joining us, check out the About This Project link for details. Basically, I make playlists of all the singles by certain musical artists and then try to order them using the guiding principle “do I like each song more than the last song.” I define “single” in a broad enough way to include any song that was released as a purchasable single in any format in any country; as a promotional single in any country; as a video; or generally any song that I know charted anywhere. My main sources are Wikipedia (mostly reliable) and Discogs (reasonably reliable). I welcome editing feedback since sometimes I favor speed over spelling.
I’ve been listening of Karen O’s solo (and collaborative) work recently and it is excellent in its own right and highly recommended. That said, even thought the Yeah Yeah Yeahs haven’t released any new music in six years, there’s no indication that they’ve broken up. I will continue to fervently hope for new music from the band. Fortunately, there’s plenty of music that they’ve already released for us to enjoy, which brings us to:
10. Cheated Hearts
Third single from Show Your Bones (2006), released as a single in 2006
The 10th best song of 2006 as voted by NME is also my 10th favorite single by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. “Cheated Hearts” is an unusually wordy Yeah3 song but many of those words are repeated phrases so it still falls in their general oeuvre. Honest to goodness, I own (in digital form) Show Your Bones and quite like it and still managed to not really be fully aware of this song until I started working on this list. Turns out, it’s really quite good and the highlight is Karen O’s delivery of the repeated lyrics (“Takin’ it off,” “I think I’m bigger than the sound,” etc). You can sing along with most of the song upon first listen if you wish. When Sean O’Malley and I are designing song structures for OIl in the Alley and want the audience to sing along with our improvised lyrics, we try to identify places where we can just repeat the same thing a whole bunch. It is a very effective technique for a song that is intended to be primarily enjoyed live. Sure enough, this song is like 100 times better live.
9. Date with the Night
First single from Fever to Tell (2003), released as a single in 2003
Our friends at Genius proposed that this song is about masturbation. I was dubious – next to drug use, masturbation seems to be a favorite incorrect assumption about song meanings, but Stereogum (which I’ll treat as an authority here) calls the song “an explosive ode to female pleasure.” Well, rock on. “Date With The Night” was the band’s first single from their first album and was a little more representational of their sound than the enormous hit third single, “Maps.” I first heard it after I purchased the CD of Fever to Tell. It’s the second song on that album after the non-single “Rich.” Funny (?) story – I was so put off by “Rich” initially that I didn’t listen to the full CD for several months. I’d put it on, that song would start and I’d turn it off and go back to Arcade Fire or something. Eventually “Rich” grew on me enough to listen to the rest of the album and I loved “Date With The Night” almost from the first moment I heard it. But, wow, was “Rich” initially a roadblock for me at first.
8. Turn Into
Second single from Show Your Bones (2006), released as a single in 2006
“Turn Into” always makes me think of another song – a specific song – but the mental connection is so tenuous and the other song is possibly so obscure that I can’t quite make out what that song is. If I ever figure it out, I will shout “Eureka,” a word which would make an excellent title to a YYY tune. Something about Nick Zinner’s acoustic guitar work here reminds me a little of a early 70’s Holly song – not a specific one, mind you. So what I’m saying is, a song with the line “I’ll hear it in my head real low” actually makes me hear two different impossible-for-me-to-specify songs in my own head. Is that why I like this song so much? Because it is making some sort of primal connection with other ancient (?) tunes in my brain? Doesn’t all music connect to something primal? Something more primal than The Hollies in most cases, but still.
7. Heads Will Roll
Second single from It’s Blitz! (2009), released as a single in 2009
The Yeah Yeah Yeahs decided to write a dance song from the point of view of the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland. It’s a bit of an atypical song for them, but it was a huge hit. Here in my rankings, it’s the first of the truly great Yeah Yeah Yeahs songs. Before we go any further, let me mention that I thought the title of their 2009 album was It’s a Blitz but, in fact, there is no “a.” An observant reader caught this mistake and, thus, I’ve been able to simultaneously hide my ignorance (by correcting the title in the previous entry) and to draw attention to it. Back to “Heads Will Roll,” it is arguably the bands biggest hit, unarguably their best selling single (certainly in the UK), and was featured in the promos (NSFW) for the fourth season of The Tudors. The song was ubiquitous enough in 2009-10 that even I, here in my advanced years, heard it in the wild – most of these songs I heard because I actively sought them out. Great tune, I just like six better.
6. Maps
Third single from Fever to Tell (2003), released as a single in 2004
My wife despises this song so I have to listen to it more or less in secret. It sounds like nothing else on Fever to Tell and I imagine people hearing this lovely song of broken heart related fragility and thinking “I’ll by that album” and then running into “Date With The Night” (#9) and freaking as Karen O screams “choke choke choke choke.” Of course, my fantasy is ruined by the fact that even in 2004, most young people were shifting into MP3 mode and probably just purchased this one song. There is a famous rumor about the source of the title of the song, but since it’s never been confirmed I shan’t repeat it here. According to Karen O, the lyrics are about being separated from your loved one – in her case, because her then-boyfriend was also a musician who was frequently on tour. The “they” in “they don’t love you like I love you” are therefor his adoring fans. “Maps” earned the band a bunch of exposure back in the day including this kind of glorious performance at the MTV movie awards. I love the overall build in the tune and also how Zinner’s guitar noodling continues for like six hours after the rest of the song is over. You get me, Nick Zinner.
5. Despair
Second single from Mosquito (2013), released as a single in 2013
This song started down by the bottom of my list when I started my ranking because I hadn’t really spent any time with it. I imagine if I spent a few more months with it, it would climb even higher. The lyrics are kind of brilliant – despair is personified (I imagine Neil Gaiman’s Despair from Sandman when I picture her) as this entity that has always been with the singer through her bad and lonely times. Their relationship is almost tender, but at the same time it is a gloomy, ironic image. Sort of like “everything is awful, but at least I have my despair.” If the song ended there, it would be a great goth tune, but Karen O jumps up an octave and aurally lets the sun shine in on herself and everyone else who is despairing. I mean, Yeahx3 are still a 21st century indie rock band so it doesn’t end up sounding like The Flintstones or anything,, but it still is a nice little positive jolt after a few minutes of wallowing in misery.
4. Zero
First single from It’s Blitz! (2009), released as a single in 2009
One of my favorite songs (probably, in fact, my favorite song) by the Smashing Pumpkins (a band whose work I’m not likely to ever rank) is also called “Zero.” I’m just gonna say that I like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ “Zero” even better. I’m disappointed that all four of my top four weren’t huge international mego-hits that everyone knows and then get played at Football (both U.S. and U.K.) games like the White Stripe’s “Seven Nation Army.” I love that song, but how is that an appropriate song for sport? Justice for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Blast “you’re a zero” at the players the next time they take the field and by the time the song gets to the bit about “climb climb climb” they’ll be ready to kick some ball. Don’t make me do everything for you, professional sports leagues. Anyhow, this song was critically acclaimed by everyone (including me) in 2009. What do we critics know? The world chose “Boom Boom Pow” to be the top single of that year, a song that I’m just listening to for the first time right now because I, too, am a zero.
3. Sacrilege
First single from Mosquito (2013), released as a single in 2013
That disturbing, Memento-like music video by French collective Megaforce afforded me my first encounter with this song and colored my interpretation of the lyrics. The video suggests a gruesome end for the lovers in the song, but the lyrics are much more oblique (and offer the suggestion that the singer’s hints that her lover is an angel are perhaps more symbolic than literal). Anyhow, “Sacrilege” (a word that is currently ranked number one on my list of “Words Doyle Most Often Needs To Use Spell Check To Spell Correctly,” just over “it’s/its”) makes it clear that the narrator of this song is troubled by the identity of her angelic (symbolic or not) lover. It builds to an ending featuring the gospel choir Broadway Inspirational Voices who sing both her “and I plead and I pray” line and the taunting “Sacrilege you say” refrain – first with her and then they eventually drown out her voice. That’s where the song leaves her – there’s no resolution and no peace. That limbo is, of course, a kind of hell. Really, a fabulously constructed song. One of the best parts – and I encourage you to listen to it and just focus on this – is Brian Chase’s drum work.
2. Down Boy
First single from the EP Is Is (2007), released as a single in 2007
“Down Boy” is a haunting piece of music from a fairly obscure 2007 EP release, Is Is. Nick Zinner releases his inner guitar god on the chourses and that guitar god turns out to be an angry, Lovecraftian beast intent on destroying all who behold it. Zinner also contributes the serpentine synthesizer line that slithers through the song. Karen O sings a lyric that sounds like defiance in the face of her own surrender, if that makes any sense – she says she’s going to stand for her friend in the verses, then asks that she be counted down (like in a boxing match?) on the choruses. Nick Chase’s drumming underpins the whole tune, sometimes keeping a steady rhythm, sometimes running amok amidst the rest of the antediluvian terror. Maybe I’m overselling the horror angle here. I can’t tell. The song gives me chicken skin. The soft/loud structure (very early 90’s, kids) still gets my stagnant blood pumping. This song is amazing and I can’t believe I’d never heard it before I started working on this list.
1. Gold Lion
First single from Show Your Bones (2006), released as a single in 2006
Yes, I recognize there is a similarity between this song and Love and Rocket’s classic “No New Tale To Tell.” No, I don’t care because when Karen O gets to that climactic “I’ll you what to… ooh ooh” part of the song I’m completely transported. Apparently, the titular gold lion in the lyrics is a reference to a Gold Lion advertising award which was one by a commercial with vocals by Karon O. I can’t tell you much else about what the lyrics might be actually be about, but in my brain the song seems to be about the need to communicate a feeling that it beyond words. Like you know what you felt and you fail at describing it, so you try and get the idea across with sound a gesture, you know? I suspect with 99% certainty that there is no deliberate connection, but I’m reminded of Kevin Rowland’s similarly unsuccessful attempt to describe his new paramour on “This Is What She’s Like” (#1). Clearly, I enjoy songs about the challenges inherent in turning feelings and impressions into words (because that’s something I struggle with – see my attempt to set “Down Boy” as a nightmare in the previous entry). I love the little meandering instrumental between the second verse and the bridge, particularly when it resolves into “Outside, Inside.” I have learned the lyrics to this song so I can sing along to it everytime it comes on the radio (and curse myself when I get the slightly different word orders wrong). When this song pops up on shuffle, it will be the only song I listen to for the next 20 minutes, over and over again. “Gold Lion” is an absolute favorite and among my favorite tracks of the 21st century so far.
And that’s that for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Thank you for reading!
Coming Soon: Elvis Costello