Fever to Tell is the debut studio album by American indie rock band Yeah Yeah Yeahs, released in April 2003 by Interscope. It was co-produced by David Andrew Sitek, his first of many production credits for the group, and recorded at Headgear Studio in New York City. To maintain creative control, the band financed the album themselves before signing with Interscope for distribution. Building on the garage rock sound of their 2001 debut EP, the band incorporated elements of art punk and dance-punk, while lead singer and songwriter Karen O was inspired by her experiences in New York with intimacy and sexuality.
Fever to Tell is widely considered a seminal work of the 2000s indie and garage rock movements, as well as Yeah Yeah Yeahs's magnum opus. The album features in several publications' lists of the decade's best albums, and in multiple rankings of the greatest albums of all time.
Background and recording
In 2000, singer/songwriter Karen O—then known as Karen Orzolek—and guitarist Nick Zinner founded the duo Unitard, before changing the name to Yeah Yeah Yeahs and adding drummer Brian Chase to form a trio. They embraced a "trashy, punky, [and] grimy" style inspired by the college music scene Karen O saw in Ohio.[1]
During the next two years, Yeah Yeah Yeahs earned positive reviews for their live shows and their self-titled debut EP, released in 2001. These efforts led to offers from major record labels to finance their debut studio album; however, the band chose to independently finance the project "to do it on our turf, on our terms".[2]
Yeah Yeah Yeahs conceived Fever to Tell in 2002, cancelling a performance at that year's Reading Festival in order to focus on recording the album.[3] They chose to record at the low-budget Headgear Studio in Brooklyn, where they jointly produced it with David Andrew Sitek, then a member of TV on the Radio.[4][5] The band hired him because they "felt immediately like we were family" and "we didn't know anyone else."[6] The album was mixed by Zinner and sound engineer Alan Moulder in London.[7]
The musical style of Fever to Tell built on what the band had previously produced. Its lyrics were written by lead vocalist Karen O and explore female sexuality, heartbreak and intimacy.[14] Karen O explained the album's content in an interview for The Believer:
When we were all living in New York and we started the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, I was twenty-one. I was at the peak of being completely absorbed in the New York night scene and the New York music and social scene, although there wasn’t much of a music scene at that point. But the whole hedonistic side of me was kind of trumping everything else. We were feeding off that manic street energy. It really did feel much dirtier and more antagonistic. And as the years have gone by, I think we’re more removed from just being there. So we had to rely on other things that were more inside of us. I think that’s when the second half of our Fever to Tell album started happening, like "Y Control" and "Maps" and this whole other side of us was starting to get nurtured. We were relying more on our emotions and what was going on inside. The inner turmoil rather than the outer turmoil. What feels the most different for me, as far as what’s going to affect the way that we write, is my age, turning twenty-six. It feels like an old twenty-six.[15]
Release and promotion
Fever to Tell was released on May 3, 2003, by Interscope Records.[16] It debuted at number 67 on the Billboard 200 in the week of May 17.[17] To promote the album, "Date with the Night" and "Pin" were released as the first two singles. Interscope wanted to release "Maps" earlier but the band's resistance delayed it until February 2004, when the album had sold only 124,000 copies. The single became a hit on MTV and rock radio, charting at number nine on Billboard's Hot Modern Rock Tracks, and its success helped triple sales of the album.[2]
In March 2009, Fever to Tell reached sales of more than one million copies worldwide.[18] As of March 2013, the album had sold 640,000 copies in United States.[19]
Fever to Tell received universal acclaim from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 85, based on 27 reviews.[20]Rolling Stone's Jon Pareles believed Fever to Tell was evidence that "the New York rock renaissance runs deeper and wilder than the Strokes." He greatly praised Karen O's energy and performances, calling her "one excitable girl."[12] Heather Phares of AllMusic praised "Karen O's unearthly vocals, Nick Zinner's ever-expanding guitar prowess, and Brian Chase's powerful drumming" but felt that, due to "poor sequencing", Fever to Tell was "at different times, scattered and monotonous."[21]Entertainment Weekly's Josh Tyrangiel praised the band and deemed Fever to Tell "the Karen O show." However, he opined the album "feels a lot like a series of quickies — exhausting, fun, but a bit empty."[23]
Andrew Perry from The Daily Telegraph called it an "exhilarating dose of lo-fi garage-rock".[30] In The Village Voice, Robert Christgau observed "a striking sound" that is "both big and punk, never a natural combo", and highlighted by Zinner's "dangerous riffs". He had reservations about the subject matter, however; while noting "two human-scale songs toward the end", Christgau said "to care about this band you have to find Karen O's fuck-me persona provocative if not seductive, and since I've never been one for the sex-is-combat thing, I find it silly or obnoxious depending on who's taking it seriously."[29]
Fever to Tell has impacted several genres, especially within NYC's early-'00s rock resurgence. In 2018, it was deemed "one of [that scene's] few enduring albums" by Steve Foxe of Paste. The site rated it #15 out of the 50 all-time greatest garage rock albums.[8] Within indie rock, Fever has left "an indelible mark". In 2022, NME's Erica Campbell wrote that it paved the way for the genre's future "devil may care frontwom[e]n and an abundance of rule-breaking by those seeking post-punk creativity."[35] In 2023, uDiscover Music's Laura Stavropoulos wrote that dance-rock, NYC's next wave, was put "into motion" through the "groove-laden" album. Within the era's "quickly calcifying" garage rock revival, Stavropoulos wrote that it provided "a sense of fun and urgency" to the scene.[9]
Fever's 2017 reissue garnered critical acclaim. The Line of Best Fit's Joe Goggins wrote that it was "still [the band's] masterpiece" and dubbed it "a chaotic symphony in sex, debauchery and bottomless anxiety," positively comparing it to PJ Harvey's 1993 album Rid of Me.[32]Uncut's Michael Bonner praised that it stayed "as visceral, as exciting, [and] as confounding as ever."[34]
In June 2005, the album was ranked number 89 on Spin magazine's list of the 100 Greatest Albums, 1985–2005.[36] Featuring in the 2010 book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, Fever to Tell was hailed as "the coolest and cleverest record of 2003".[7] In 2009, the album was named by NME, Pitchfork, and Rolling Stone the fifth, 24th, and 28th best album of the 2000s decade, respectively.[37][38][39] In 2019, the album was ranked 38th on The Guardian's 100 Best Albums of the 21st Century list.[40] In 2020, it was ranked number 377 on Rolling Stone's Top 500 Albums of All-Time.[41]
Track listing
Original release
All tracks written by Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Releases in the United Kingdom and Japan feature the bonus tracks "Yeah! New York" and a CD-ROM video of "Date with the Night".[42][43]
In 2017, Fever to Tell was remastered and reissued digitally and with a limited edition box set, both of which feature expanded track listings and bonus content. These include "Poor Song" and other unused tracks, as well as demos and recordings of live performances.[44]
Personnel
Credits adapted from the liner notes of Fever to Tell.[45]
↑Haramis, Nick (March 9, 2013). "On with the Show"(PDF). Billboard. Vol.125, no.9. p.24. ISSN0006-2510. Archived(PDF) from the original on January 16, 2022. Retrieved January 16, 2022– via World Radio History.
↑Haramis, Nick (March 9, 2013). "On with the Show"(PDF). Billboard. Vol.125, no.9. p.24. ISSN0006-2510. Archived(PDF) from the original on January 16, 2022. Retrieved January 16, 2022– via World Radio History.
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