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12:43 · 2,341 words of transcript · watch on YouTube
- AM debuted at number six in America and sold more than their previous three albums combined, while at home every album had already gone to number one.
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- They started out cutting hip hop beats at the end of the nineties and only picked up instruments after the garage rock revival reached them.
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- In 2003 they burned an 18-song demo to CDs and gave them away, wanting nothing more than for more people to hear it.
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- A local photographer put the demo online and fans built the band's MySpace page, so audiences were singing the words at shows before any label was involved.
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- They signed to Domino because the owner ran it out of his apartment and only signed acts he personally liked.
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- The debut sold over 360,000 copies in its first week, outselling the rest of the top twenty combined, and became the fastest selling debut by a band in British chart history.
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- The same record sold about 34,000 copies in America, where critics found them catchy but unexceptional against an established post-punk scene.
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- Andy Nicholson left because the speed of the rise overwhelmed him, and Nick O'Malley replaced him as they went back into the studio.
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- The turn came from opening for The Black Keys in 2012, their first time not headlining, where a new closing song got a reaction strong enough to become the blueprint for a whole album.
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- The reinvention was deliberate: writing from drums and bass rather than guitar, a conversational vocal delivery, falsettos, and a target of sounding good in a car rather than like four men in a room.
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