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15:41 · 2,628 words of transcript · watch on YouTube
- The band were called Perfect Confusion until a man charged at Matt Shultz after a Knoxville show and, instead of attacking him, hugged him while repeating the phrase that became their name.
▶ 00:01:21
- After South by Southwest in 2007 they signed to Relentless and toured Canada with Queens of the Stone Age.
▶ 00:01:42
- They moved from Kentucky to east London deliberately, building a European audience before attempting America, and played British late-night television before the debut came out.
▶ 00:01:57
- The band were self-aware from the start about arriving late, knowing in 2008 that their punk-funk niche was already full.
▶ 00:02:26
- Ain't No Rest for the Wicked made them, carried by its placement in the opening of the game Borderlands, reaching 32 in the UK, 3 on Alternative Songs and just into the Hot 100.
▶ 00:02:51
- For the second album they recorded more than 80 tracks, were excited by none of them, scrapped the lot, and built the record from ideas saved for other projects.
▶ 00:03:45
- Melophobia means fear of music, and the record is about the fear of making it, after Shultz concluded that chasing the cool or the artistic pushed him further from honest inspiration.
▶ 00:06:20
- The working rule that came out of that was to trust whatever came first, which is also when the punk sound disappeared for good.
▶ 00:07:00
- Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys produced the fourth album after they toured together, and the result sounds closer to their contemporaries than to themselves.
▶ 00:08:24
- The Grammys gave best rock album to their safest record, which the video treats as the trap: the pop adjustment worked, so there was no incentive left to leave it.
▶ 00:09:54