Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Karen O Is Still 'Fascinated' By The Popularity Of 'Maps'

By Katrina Nattress

September 3, 2019

2013 Coachella Valley Music And Arts Festival – Day 1

It's been 16 years since Yeah Yeah Yeahs released their seminal album Fever to Tell, which features the unsuspecting hit single "Maps," and all these years later the band's frontwoman Karen O still finds herself intrigued by the song's popularity. The singer recently reflected over the track on BBC Radio 6's The First Time.

“I’m fascinated by it, I really am,” she said when asked how she feels about "Maps" in 2019. “I’m endlessly curious about that song because it’s just strange to me. It was one of the earliest songs that we wrote for the [first] record. I remember it was like a daydream making that song; it just happened so kinda effortlessly and so incidentally.”

She went on to explain how the song originated from a sample created by guitarist Nick Zinner in his bedroom. “I was walking past his door, I heard the sample and came in and I was like, ‘What is that?’ And then five minutes later I was singing basically the lyrics to it and then it was there,” she recalled. “It was like one of those songs that wrote itself in like five minutes.”

“And then yeah, it’s done pretty well for itself since then," she added with a laugh. "It’s a love song, and there’s just not a lot of bands that have one of their biggest songs as a love song. So I’m pretty stoked about that, too.”

Reacquaint yourself with "Maps" below.

Though YYY haven't released an album since 2013's Mosquito, Karen O gave an update on the next LP last summer, explaining she was waiting to get "struck by inspiration for it.”

Photo: Getty Images

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