The Yeah Yeah Yeahs singer will give in to her urges, so long as shes onstage.
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Listen for the splintering yowl and youll hearKaren Oattempting an exorcism.
If you felt she was working something out, she was.
I was going through some shit, she says.
Times, like, a hundred.
Youth was her armor.
Her sentences swivel around; she pinches her skin for comfort.
This is the part of her that needs to exist so she can let the other one loose onstage.
Fever to Tellwas a very New York album, and theres something aboutCool It Downthat feels very California.
These days it feels like summer is coming, summer is coming.
Before we got into the studio, it was one of the worst wildfire seasons in L.A.Blade Runner 2049.
You wake up one morning, the sky is pink.
Sun is like an orb hanging low in it.
I have to tell my son how we cant go outside because of the air quality.
That really seeps into your psyche, especially after a year of total dystopia of the pandemic.
Writing this record wasnt like, Im gonna write a record about everything falling apart.
It feels okay when you feel more connected.
When you feel disconnected is when it feels not okay.
The label had already given up on the record.
Theyre like, The reactions been so-so like for the first two songs.
The first song wasDate With the Night, and second was Pin.
You just have your ideas, and you dont really know who to trust around you.
So you make silly single decisions sometimes.
From what I remember, Maps was an early internet hit that eventually got radio play.
Do you remember when it started to take off?Nick would know the trajectory exactly.
Its quite blurry for me.
Its not like we showed a shit-ton of promise.
It wasnt an Adele situation.
You get it off on the right foot and then youre golden.
Is it because he was also new to this?Yeah, he was drunk on our exaltation.
Asif was this rogue wild man.
Totally exalted, totally irreverent.
We were just going for it.
Its that blissful ignorance of youth.
Lets ask for the world.
And he was totally the right guy for that.
Hes like, Im gonna get all this crazy shit for you guys.
Were like, Okay!
The music industry couldnt be more different now.
Be like, We have the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
They dont make much money, but theyre cool.
I was hoping you could explain that to me.I dont remember saying Gwenomics, but maybe.
It sounds like I couldve come up with that term.
In my own way, I carved out something for myself.
But I didnt deliver on the goods as far as that major-label expectation was concerned.
Did you have those ambitions?I had this quite naive, useful fantasy.
Because it just wasnt really what we set out to do.
That always seems to happen.
Theres bands that are just better equipped to pick up where we kind of …
I feel like we opened the gates.
But by the time those bands hit the scene, there was a bit of road paved.
There was tons of interest.
They could take the ball and run with it.
Its just a different key in of artist or person who has that in them.
You have to be incredibly ambitious.
You have to have an iron stomach.
And also be driven and hardworking.
My idea of hardworking is pouring every ounce of my essence into a piece of music.
Do you still feel that way?He spelled it out pretty clearly.
Some of us in the band probably reacted to that more strongly than myself.
We came from a school of thought that was really into a scene.
It felt local or like your best kept secret.
It all sounds very old-fashioned.
Youd be ousted right away.
Now its accessible, so their sphere of influence is much more fluid and bigger.
Theres also less distinguishing between everything.
It feels very undercover.
Thereve been moments in our career where maybe wed think,Oh, why cant I do that myself?
Like if you make something good, then itll resonate in ways you maybe dont expect.
I dont know how anyone makes a hit song.
I know there are robots making hit songs now.
Youre raised in a system where theres already this expectation of delivering records and what you do with them.
I wonder how much even subconsciously that affects my ability to be pure in my artistic expression.
What would I make without any expectation of that feedback?
Sometimes its hard to get to that place.
But I think its possible.
What was the pressure like working on the second albumShow Your Bones?The sophomore record is a bitch.
You do the first one free of any attention, really.
Its mostly fantasy and fun and flexing in endless possibility.
The second record is the identity-crisis record.
Then youre like,Oh my god.
But we really changed.
We abandoned the sound of the first record and did something outside our comfort zone.
Theyre an artist who changes it up.
The heyday really felt like it was from late 2001 to 2004.
Now we have a chance of making it big.That really can spoil the fun.
Its been nine years since your last album,Mosquito.Im curious how the Yeah Yeah Yeahs came back together.
Or if you had sort ofIf we dispersed?
Gone to your own corners.We definitely went to our own corners.
So much life has happened between our records.
Come 2019, I started to feel like,Man, its time for some new material.
I started feeling like we needed an infusion.
Nick and I started talking about making new music in a very noncommittal way.
Maybe two songs for the fans.
And then a month later it was the pandemic.
I like high-octane experiences, but I dont push myself towards them.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs is what gets me out of the house, because Im actually a pretty introverted person.
I saw so many places I would never in a million years have gone on my own.
I was processing a deeper value of how much the band cracked open my life.
After that whole year of feeling like it might never happen again, I cant take anything for granted.
That was unconscious in the beginning, but you’ve got the option to lose sight of it.
When things go awry, its more chaotic.
Speaking those things out loud and coming to those understandings consciously helps us feel whats already there.
What was at the core of the tension before?We agitate each other in just the right way.
All that friction makes the diamond.
The way I agitate Nick is I perpetually push him out of his comfort zone.
And he doesnt like that.
Just being like, Youre a fucking god at this sound youre making.
Now do another one.
Hes like, What the fuck?
Im a god at this; why would you not want me to do this?
And Im like, Because I want to start doing other things.
Abandon the certainty and the comfort, and go into that dark place with me.
And what he does for me is like: Knock, knock, knock.
Can we do the Yeah Yeah Yeahs again now?
He draws me back.
He doesnt let me just fly off on my own thing.
Hes the heart and soul of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
Whenever you hear a Yeah Yeah Yeahs record, you have Nick to thank, really.
Cause hes at the core keeping the band together.
Your response was a bit ambivalent.Yeah, it was atthe Cooler.I think we were seeing James Chance.
I feel bad about that because I was wasted.
I tapped her on the shoulder.
Shes probably just trying to enjoy herself, and then this young sloppy girl comes up to her.
Shes a badass, but it wasnt very helpful advice at the time.
But maybe thats something I would say ten years from now.
There was no guidebook.
There were no mentors I could get feedback from.
I was stuck in my own head.
And the men around me which was, like, everyone couldnt relate even if they tried.
It was a lonely place to be, and I knew intrinsically that my experience of it was different.
I needed some validation that it was okay that it was different.
We feel differently, we process things differently, we create differently.
I really felt like I had something to prove.
But the competition between other women, it feels more like mistrust.
Maybe its something we have internalized since the moment were born in white Christian America.
Maybe its a mistrust of the divine feminine.
The good thing about getting older is being able to start questioning who benefits from me feeling this way.
It was deeply artistically affirming.
She was a really egoless, very intuitive musician so not bothered about her part.
Like just very much in the flow of what the overarching vision for the record was.
Do you mentor other women artists?No ones really taken me up on my offer yet.
Maybe my invitation has been too soft.
Were gonna have lasagna.
Its gonna be delicious.
Were gonna go deep.
We were touring Europe.
The reaction was fanatical, and the intensity was really taking a toll on me.
The reaction from the audience?Yeah.
I do, like, stage antics, and there are people grabbing at me.
But it was wearing me out.
I was struggling and also getting further and further away from being able to finish this record.
So I threw the gauntlet down.
Do you know the kind of damage thats gonna do to your reputation with promoters and fans?
And unless youre in a fucking hospital bed, youre doing that show.
That self-sacrifice didnt make sense to me.
So I want to redirect the focus to finishing that.
And I felt like nobody was on my side.
They thought I was totally crazy and selfish.
They thought it was sacrilege.
In hindsight, it was the right thing.
No promoters punished us.
We just got bigger and bigger.
No is a more tantalizing word to a lot of people than yes.
Having limitations on the access to you makes you all the more desirable.
And we got to focus on our record and make it a fucking great record.
Thats whats gonna outlive us.
I was strong as fuck to do that.
You were.At the time, I felt like the biggest asshole.
I felt like this was such a sign of weakness, that I just couldnt hack it.
And there wasnt a single woman around me to be like, Girl!
I got your back.
After Brian saw that put together, he was like, Im really sorry we couldnt see you.
We werent seeing where you were at the time, and how much you were going through.
Its hard to sustain.
There really was a spectacle of self-destruction happening, but it was therapy.
The stage is a safe space for me.
Its the greatest gift in my life.
Its such a release.
Its like wild ecstasy onstage, something I cant access hardly anywhere else.
It was a sandbox.
you’re able to throw a tantrum up there.
you’re able to be sexually inappropriate up there.
Youre beyond any mundane experience.
Theres not a whole lot of people that will allow themselves to go there in front of an audience.
But it felt natural.
I cant explain why.
But if I overdo it, it obliterates me.
It became something bigger, where I felt like I had very little control of what was happening onstage.
I was injuring myself.
I was drinking a lot while I was doing those shows.
I was trying to numb parts of me because it was hard to process the immediate attention and fervor.
It went from really lighthearted, playful, and celebratory to more angsty.
Ive figured it out, more or less.
Was alcohol a performance-enhancing drug at the time?It helped me break through shyness.
I always underestimate the adrenaline.
Thats a drug in itself when youre up there.
It mostly got me through the hump of getting into that place where those aspects of me are unleashed.
Now that Im in my early 40s, I dont want to feel that out of control.
And then the love from the crowd, that rapport.
Theres subtleties to it.
You dont need alcohol to feel totally set free.
Not at all when it comes to being an awkward person trying to fumble through the world.
Did it help with boys?Boys havent really been a problem for me.
Maybe its a Scorpio aspect of who I am.
I was boy-crazy at the time.
I didnt have a boyfriend all through high school.
Part of me was like, Its a great way to meet some cute boys.
Maybe thats not a very empowering reason from a female perspective.
Isnt that why boys start bands?Yeah, it wasnt that different for me.
You want to turn yourself into who everybodys dreaming of.
Christian Joy made almost every costume of mine til very, very recently.
It just goes to show what the sexiest thing that exists is: Confidence, man.
When I put on one of her unhinged, what-the-hell-is-this kind of costumes, I feel invincible.
I feel like a superstar when I put on her shit.
Ive always been in the school of thought of Keep them guessing.
So be completely covered and just show a sliver of ankle.
It will have them going [makes panting sounds] just guessing what the rest of you is.
You gotta leave something for the imagination.
Thats where all the fantasy takes place.
Its also a dare.Its totally like a dare.
Its a little dangerous.
A lot of my persona, especially onstage, presents an element of danger where youre not really sure.
Im not that put together up there.
I think thats exciting.
My understanding is that he has a studio in his house.
Dean Hurley, his engineer and producer, started playing the song.
I listened through it maybe once or twice.
Davids just sitting out there smoking cigarettes.
And I was like,Karen, this is not the time in your life to buckle.
I cant keep listening to this without doing anything.
You have to fucking deliver on this right now.
So I just started singing.
Its so beautiful you gotta keep going!
Hes so supportive and encouraging.
Then I felt very confident and natural.
After that experience was over, I sat with him.
He was playing the song that my vocals were just freshly on, blasting it and smoking cigarettes.
I wanted to return to this feeling of angst that you felt like you would work out through performance.
And also a half-Asian, biracial girl that didnt fit in.
Very prudish and uncertain about my sexuality.
Repressing aspects of myself as you do because it felt inappropriate.
There werent many examples of positive role models in that sense.
I credit this band with saving my life over and over again.
That was in February.
Then 9/11 came seven months later.
Its not like we talked about that kind of stuff, you know?
We drowned our sorrows.
We transcended all the feelings together.
It was the salve we slapped on the wound.
And then you see it reflected back in the audience.
The agony and the ecstasy.
And then you knew,Okay, were onto something here.
Thank God for this.But it wasnt easy.
It nearly destroyed me.
Do you remember when you first were aware of racial difference?It was strange.
I was 12 or something.
I was doing this report on my moms life.
My mom is incredibly beautiful.
And she westernized herself when she came to the States with my dad.
She became the most American version of what she could be without totally giving up her identity.
That was a little confusing for me.
She didnt present as Korean.
I still dont quite understand it.
And how much of a badass she was.
Almost alienated herself from her family with that decision.
It was a real struggle for her.
She had to be really brave.
That totally recontextualized her for me.
She was no longer just Mother.She became a hero.
I embraced it in college my curiosity in not only my Korean heritage but Asian culture and art.
Around that time, I started going to Korea almost every year.
I was very close with my grandparents.
There was a burgeoning youth culture there, which became what it is now.
When did you get your first bowl cut?Three.
It was a real China-doll bowl too.
My brother had it too, so we had matching bowl cuts.
I really went full bowl again for our second record.
I experimented with many dos like a little more asymmetrical with a little rats tail for a while.
But I think what my hair wants to do is go into that bowl shape.
I didnt know anyone who could pull it off, because there were almost no Asian American front women.
I have not been able to shake my love for the bowl.
Everyones been telling me to watchPEN15, but mostly Im just always staring at her hair.
Like, Ooooh.Love that bowl.God, its a good look.
Im very happy for Korean American kids now.
But it makes me a little sad because when I was young, it was a complete desert.
There was almost nothing on the map for me to embrace.
Even in the indie-rock scene, there were some Japanese bands but almost nothing Korean.
So I was patiently waiting.
This last decade, where it just fucking exploded, I wish that wouldve happened ten years earlier.
It wouldve filled me with so much joy if that had happened in my more formative years.
How is it doing shows with the Linda Lindas?Its just so cool, man.
Its been hard for me to process what it really means to me.
I just think about 10-year-old Karen.
The drummer from the Linda Lindas just turned 12.
I know people love to praise people who are ahead of their time.
Christian Joy was my sister in arms.
She really felt like the one woman who went through the ups and downs with me.
She was also an unconventional artist, and she helped get me through a lot of it.
But going into uncharted territory was also incredibly exciting.
The thrill is in discovery.
Its in finding out that your potential is way more than you would ever give yourself credit for.
Its a dare, as you say.
Like, I triple-dog dare you to drop some jaws tonight in that audience.
And then to break all the rules for the men around me.
To set them free in the process.
To be like, Ey, you dont need to do that.
Whats not to like about that?
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