Programme notes
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Maps (Official Music Video)
Summary
A 2003 song by the New York trio, and a deliberate break from the abrasive garage-punk of their earlier material: a slow, sustained guitar figure, a restrained drum part, and a vocal from Karen O that holds back far longer than the band's reputation suggested it would.
The video is a single continuous performance in which her visible distress is not performed for the camera so much as caught by it, and its emotional directness is a large part of why the song travelled beyond the band's existing audience.
Why it matters
It became the record that proved the early-2000s New York scene could produce something other than attitude, and it is routinely cited as one of the defining songs of its decade. Its influence is audible in a generation of guitar bands that learned restraint from it.