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In Conversation: Karen O

Listen for the splintering yowl and you’ll hear Karen O attempting an exorcism. Her shows with her band, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, in the early 2000s were crotch-grabbing, microphone-fellating, olive-oil-drizzling art-punk chaos, performed in outfits by costume designer and artist Christian Joy that looked like the next morning’s hangover. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs were making dance music, the stuff of bruised knees and whiplashed necks, and Karen O threw herself around with abandon. If you felt she was working something out, she was. “I was going through some shit,” she says. “Times, like, a hundred.”

After a nine-year hiatus, Karen O and her bandmates, Nick Zinner and Brian Chase, return with Cool It Down, spurred by another sense of crisis. Their first LP, Fever to Tell from 2003, channeled the wreckage of post-9/11 New York; their latest contains the threat of environmental apocalypse. When Karen O began playing with the band, she was one of the lone girls among the boy bands. Youth was her armor. But the person who sits down in a restaurant booth for this conversation projects the other side of the too-sensitive artist, one frayed by too much attention and who describes herself as “a cautious, the-world’s-a-scary-place kind of person.” 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 Tell was a very New York album, and there’s something about Cool It Down that feels very California. Both of the singles, “Spitting Off the Edge of the World” and “Burning,” channel an existential dread I associate with L.A. — that the world might fall apart at any moment.
You know Game of Thrones: Winter is coming, winter is coming. 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. Red skies. Ash. 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 can’t go outside because of the air quality. It was apocalyptic. That really seeps into your psyche, especially after a year of total dystopia of the pandemic.

Writing this record wasn’t like, “I’m gonna write a record about everything falling apart.” But I really depend on art as this buoy for me to know I’m not alone in how crazy I feel when the world does seem like it’s crumbling around me. It feels okay when you feel more connected. When you feel disconnected is when it feels not okay. The reason I wanted to join a major label when we hadn’t even put out a full LP was because I was like, “Bro, if we got a shot to connect to more people, let’s take it.” Miraculously, against all odds — because “Maps” was like a third or fourth single on Fever to Tell — that just happened to connect. The label had already given up on the record. They’re like, “The reaction’s been so-so like for the first two songs.” The first song was “Date With the Night,” and second was “Pin.”

Why wouldn’t you start with “Maps” or “Y Control”? Just go for the bangers?
Oh, but you have no concept of it. You just have your ideas, and you don’t 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. It’s quite blurry for me. The radio play is when I started processing that something was happening, because we were playing those radio Jingle Ball festivals all the sudden and people were flocking to see us because of “Maps.”

When you signed with Interscope for your first major record deal, what were the details that were important to you?
A three-record deal plus one option, really big advances, and getting our masters back was a really impressive deal for this little punk band from New York. It’s not like we showed a shit-ton of promise. It wasn’t an Adele situation. We’re a funny little punk band everybody was just wild about at the time. Asif Ahmed, our manager at the time, was a loose cannon and was able to score us a super-sweet deal and set the precedent after that. You get it off on the right foot and then you’re golden.

Is it because he was also new to this?
Yeah, he was drunk on our exaltation. Asif was this rogue wild man. Fucking legend. Totally exalted, totally irreverent. We were just going for it. It’s that blissful ignorance of youth. There’s no limit. Let’s ask for the world. And he was totally the right guy for that. He’s like, “I’m gonna get all this crazy shit for you guys.” We’re like, “Okay!”

The music industry couldn’t be more different now. What appeals to major labels more than anything today is a feather in the cap where they could lure in other exciting artists. Be like, “We have the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. They don’t make much money, but they’re cool.” It’s a matter of survival for a lot of labels, and rock is not really a priority for them anymore. It actually felt like a fluke for our little crew of colleagues back in 2003 — it was such a flash in the pan as far as labels actually championing that and feeling like, “Wow, this could be the next Nirvana or something.”

Ahmed has said you were worried about “Gwenomics” — referring to Gwen Stefani’s post–No Doubt transformation into a solo pop artist — at Interscope after the release of Fever to Tell. I was hoping you could explain that to me.
I don’t remember saying “Gwenomics,” but maybe. It sounds like I could’ve come up with that term. I assume that it probably had to do with this female-led pop-slash-rock mold that maybe they were trying to slot me into. Interscope had these really big prestige acts that were sort of off the cuff but still made it huge. Jimmy Iovine was hoping I would be the next Gwen. But I wasn’t. In my own way, I carved out something for myself. But I didn’t deliver on the goods as far as that major-label expectation was concerned.

Did you feel they were trying to market you as a pop star?
Definitely not as a pop star. I would have lunch with Jimmy, and he’d talk about working with Patti Smith, Debbie Harry, and Stevie Nicks before he became who he was. I think he was thinking of me more within that niche, but there’s always hope that what happens with a Billie Eilish, who’s a very true-blue artist, that maybe people will go mental on it and it’ll be a huge thing.

Photo: Daria Kobayashi Ritch

You’ve done a number of collaborations throughout your career, but one that stuck out to me was “Pinky’s Dream” for David Lynch’s album Crazy Clown Time in 2011. My understanding is that he has a studio in his house. What was the process of recording that like?
“Pinky’s Dream” was the second time I went to his studio. The first time was because I was going to try and get a collection of directors to do each song for Stop the Virgens and make like a little film out of it. So I took a meeting with him where I played that for him in his studio; nothing ever really came of that. But we share an agent at CAA, who called me up and said, “David’s working on a record, and here’s a song I think you’d be a great fit for.” I showed up to David’s studio, which is like walking into a completely separate dimension that belongs to him. I was super-nervous because I was about to sing on a David Lynch song, so I asked him for a beer, and they were scrambling to find me one because they didn’t have any. It was just to take the edge off because it was like, Oh my God, this is intense. He escorted me to this little vocal booth and gave me these lyrics he had written on a piece of paper. Dean Hurley, his engineer and producer, started playing the song. I listened through it maybe once or twice. David’s just sitting out there smoking cigarettes. And I was like, Karen, this is not the time in your life to buckle. I can’t keep listening to this without doing anything. You have to fucking deliver on this right now.

So I just started singing. Like, fearlessly. I summoned something deep within me to be like, Whatever you do, just do it and do it well. This is your moment. So I’d start singing and then the talk-back mic would come on, and it’d be David. He’d say something all in this ’50s terminology like [does a David Lynch impression], “Hot fucking dog, Karen! Rootin’-tootin’ swell! It’s so beautiful you gotta keep going!” He’s so supportive and encouraging. Then I felt very confident and natural. After that experience was over, I sat with him. What he does is he dims the lights and there’s these incredible lights that he brings up that illuminate the speakers. He was playing the song that my vocals were just freshly on, blasting it and smoking cigarettes. I was like, Yeah, if I had a heart attack and died right now, I’d feel pretty fucking stoked.

I wanted to return to this feeling of angst that you felt like you would work out through performance. What were the things that you were working out and working through?
A lifetime of being a shy girl. And also a half-Asian, biracial girl that didn’t fit in. Very prudish and uncertain about my sexuality. Repressing aspects of myself as you do because it felt inappropriate. There weren’t many examples of positive role models in that sense. I grew up in suburban New Jersey, and as someone who is extremely sensitive and has a vivid fantasy life, when it was time to unleash everything that’s been bottled up, it came out like a fucking tidal wave.

I credit this band with saving my life over and over again. In 2001, just as we were finding our place, I lost someone super-close to me, my age, in a traumatic way — to suicide. That was in February. Then 9/11 came seven months later. I was freshly out of college, a baby kid out in the big bad world, trying to hack it in New York City, just feeling in the center of pure chaos and not having the emotional maturity or guidance to to know how to navigate any of that. It’s not like we talked about that kind of stuff, you know? We just made music and met each other in bars and danced the night away, or played a show at 12 or one in the morning. 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, we’re onto something here. Thank God for this. But it wasn’t easy. It nearly destroyed me.

Could you tell me about your friend?
Peter? Oh man, it’s Peter’s day to shine. We were best friends. I met him freshman year at Oberlin College. He was from St. Louis, Missouri. He really felt like a creative soul mate for me. We wrote a lot of songs together in New York before the Yeah Yeah Yeahs that were on a demo tape that’s lost forever. After I transferred from Oberlin to NYU Film, he shortly did the same thing. Brian from our band was also really close to him. He was in a band called Back to Junk with Peter at Oberlin. It was a very midwestern punk-sounding band. It was shortly after he graduated. We were both young and lost in New York City and clueless about what we were gonna do with our lives. It was a huge shock to lose him.

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 mom’s life. I was sitting across from her, and I had this realization: She’s Korean! I was seeing her differently for the first time. My mom is incredibly beautiful. Really stunning. 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 didn’t present as Korean. It sounds absurd, but I had accepted her so fully into my experience of being an American kid that it took a while to recognize her as a full Korean mom. I still don’t quite understand it.

How did that affect your sense of self when you realized your mom was Korean?
Interviewing her then gave me a completely different perspective on her and her life. And how much of a badass she was. She broke a lot of conventions and Korean hearts, deciding to marry this white guy and move to the States. 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 went through an awkward patch on my halfie journey, being self-conscious about not looking like the other white kids. There was a rather large Korean community in that part of Jersey, but it felt disconnected from my experience. 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 rat’s tail for a while. But I think what my hair wants to do is go into that bowl shape. I didn’t 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. Everyone’s been telling me to watch PEN15, but mostly I’m just always staring at her hair. Like, Ooooh. Love that bowl. God, it’s a good look.

I’m 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 would’ve happened ten years earlier. It would’ve filled me with so much joy if that had happened in my more formative years.

How is it doing shows with the Linda Lindas?
It’s just so cool, man. It’s 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. And if there was someone who looked like me doing incredible, crazy, cool shit, I would’ve felt better about being me.

I know people love to praise people who are ahead of their time. But I think people also forget that being the first is really fucking lonely.
It’s fucking lonely as fuck, dude. 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. That’s the thing you always forget in the process: You think you want the safety and the security, but that’s got no thrill. The thrill is in discovery. It’s in finding out that your potential is way more than you would ever give yourself credit for. It’s a dare, as you say. Like, “I triple-dog dare you to drop some jaws tonight in that audience.”

It was just so exciting as a woman to feel like there were no rules for me because there were so few who came before. And then to break all the rules for the men around me. To set them free in the process. To be like, “Ey, you don’t need to do that. Let’s do this.” I loved that. What’s not to like about that?

Production Credits

• Photographs by Daria Kobayashi Ritch
• Styling by Natasha Newman-Thomas
• Hair by Gregg Lennon Jr.
• Makeup by Nick Lennon

Thank you for subscribing and supporting our journalism. If you prefer to read in print, you can also find this article in the September 12, 2022, issue of New York Magazine.

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Neither “Date With the Night” or “Pin” would chart on “The Billboard Hot 100.” Both singles did better in the U.K., reaching No. 16 and No. 29, respectively.“Maps” is the most-influential song of their discography with a debut run on “The Billboard Hot 100” of 13 weeks beginning in March 2004 — almost a full year after the album had come out — and peaking at No. 87. The success of the single pushed Fever to Tell to 1 million in sales worldwide.Asif Ahmed was the manager of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, TV on the Radio, Liars, and the Rapture.Gwen Stefani released her first solo album with Interscope, Love. Angel. Music. Baby., in 2004.The legendary producer and music executive co-founded Interscope in 1990 and over the past 50 years has worked with Bruce Springsteen, John Lennon, Meat Loaf, Tupac Shakur, and Eminem, among others. He provided the initial funding for Death Row Records and teamed with Dr. Dre to make Beats.This is according to John Seabrook’s The Song Machine.Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig wondered what it would be like if the line “Wait” in “Maps” was actually “Hold up.” He had been working on it with Diplo when the lines eventually found their way into Beyoncé’s Lemonade. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs are credited on the song.In a 2018 Vulture interview with David Marchese, Casablancas said, “Music has been co-opted by some kind of capitalist profit game … Quality is being sucked out of music.”The 2006 release received generally positive, if muted, reviews that noted the band’s “growing pains.”Their fourth album was their highest charting, debuting at No. 5 in Billboard. Shortly after their last studio album, Mosquito, in 2013, Karen O released her first solo album on Julian Casablancas’s indie label, Cult Records.Karen O was nominated for “The Moon Song” from Spike Jonze’s Her at the 2014 Oscars, where she performed it with Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend.She and the music-video director Barnaby Clay have a child named Django.In a 2006 Spin profile of the band, journalist Melissa Maerz asks Zinner if he and Karen O are still close friends, and he replies, “No.” Both members have referred to that period as a time when the band almost broke up.Goodman’s book Meet Me in the Bathroom is an oral history documenting the resurgence of the indie-rock scene in New York in the 2000s. There is a forthcoming documentary adaptation of the same title.A club in the Meatpacking District that closed in 2001.Stop the Virgens was a multidisciplinary work featuring an all-female chorus with Karen O as a narrator that ran for eight performances at St. Ann’s Warehouse in 2011.At the 2003 Livid festival in Sydney, Karen O was lying on a monitor when she fell head first off the stage  with the monitor crashing down on top of her. She has said that “the only thing that saved me from breaking my neck and my spine was the fact that I was so wasted that I was limber. I fell off like a wet noodle.”In Meet Me in the Bathroom, O says she identified with Mickey Rourke’s character in The Wrestler: “The amount I was injuring myself was just escalating, escalating, escalating.”