Karen O: The saviour of the indie scene
When looking back at the 2000s indie scene, a slight dark shadow is cast over it. Upon reflection of the era, misogyny reigns supreme in the lad culture of early indie sleaze and the boys’ club of the rock sound. But there was always one saviour, shining like a beacon and becoming a lighthouse guiding a thousand female musicians home: Karen O.
Just as guitar music was floundering in the cultural lull after the grunge movement of the 1990s, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs burst onto the scene to save it. Sure, at the same time and in the same few miles of land in New York City, The Strokes, LCD Soundsystem and Interpol were also getting started. As a collective scene in the ’00s, these bands brought about the dawn of indie as we’d come to know it. But there was always something special about Karen O, a feeling that has allowed her magic to endure long into music today.
Perhaps it simply comes down to her unending passion. Launching into the music world with the task to “shake things up a bit”, Karen O seemed to always be on a mission to dominate. Together with Brian Chase and Nick Zinner, it only took a few songs for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs to be instantly cemented into the new indie scene. Usually, the first songs shared by a new band are quickly forgotten, brushed off as learning curves before they find their true sound. But in the case of Karen O, one of those first songs was ‘Maps’, becoming one of the most defining indie songs of the decade and beyond.
The success baffled her, admitting that she is “endlessly curious about that song because it’s just strange to me”. When asked about the song’s success, she added: “I’m fascinated by it, I really am”.
Managing to imbue a raw and rough grunge rock track with a rich and luxurious feeling, ‘Maps’ is part devastating ballad and part classic rock track. To be a woman up on stage in the 2000s, surrounded by all-male band after all-male band, and then daring to sing about her feelings before descending into the chaos of tracks like ‘Y Control’ or ‘Date With The Night’ – Karen O was immediately doing things differently, doing them her way and demanding everyone shut up and pay attention. From that debut album, Fever To Tell, in 2003 through to 2022’s Cool It Down, her energy and ethos remain the same.
As much as women in male-dominated scenes should have to shoulder the extra burden of being a role model while they try to manage the weight of being a minority, Karen O does it with ease. Of course, another reason for her enduring power is the fact that she has always led by example by speaking out and standing up when necessary.
Even in the early days, a time when her peers were beginning to be derailed by heavy drug addiction and recklessness, Karen O seemed able to look at the new indie resurgence with a critical eye and a drive to survive. In the beginning, her infamous chaotic stage presence regularly resulted in injury. She was magnetic to watch, moving between shocking and seductive, playing with the role of ‘the girl on stage’ as she messed around with gender performance, ladylike-ness and the total opposite, spitting beer at her crowd then purring like a pussycat.
Talking to Billboard about her reflections on the ‘00s scene, Karen O critically analysed the moment, stating: “My insanity onstage had been escalating and the more I hurt myself, the more the crowd enjoyed it.”
Later, delving deeper during an interview with The Guardian, she added: “I did some ridiculous, masochistic stuff up on stage, like rolling around on broken glass and getting blind drunk”. But after a brutal fall in 2003, where she fell off the stage headfirst and hit her head on the guardrail, the survival instinct kicked in. “I realised I had to rethink my whole stage thing,” she continues. While her peers romanticised recklessness, Karen O wanted to survive, to keep making music with her band, and to have a career that would outlive that moment. In her own words, “We set out to conquer”.
Whether she knew it then or not, the music industry needed Karen O to survive. Now 20 years on from that fall, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs debut album and her vital launch into the music world, Karen O is regularly brought up by future generations of female artists that needed someone to look up to.
Back in the band’s early days, Karen O talked about the lack of representation in music, telling The New York Times: “Well, there have been so few female rock stars, I can count them on my right hand. When I was young, it was more appropriate for girls to imitate Madonna, but I always wanted to be Michael Jackson. I wanted to wear the glove.”
Now, thanks to her, Karen O’s name is always there for artists to reference and look up to. Beabadoobee regularly talks about the impact Karen O had on her as a young Asian woman making music. Similarly, Japanese Breakfast’s Michelle Zauner told NME, “The first artist I fell in love with has to be Karen O,” citing her “unparalleled showmanship” and saying simply, “She was the coolest performer I’d ever seen, and then when I learned she was half Korean it meant so much more to me”. Not only is Karen O a beacon of representation for East Asian women in rock, but her unabashed, confidently thrilling stage presence and musical styling completely bust the mould of what a ‘woman in music’ should look, sound and act like.
Still to this day, Karen O gets up on stage and dominates it. The band’s new music sounds just as good as their early days. Her appeal seems never-ending, and her influence endures as the saviour of a scene and a shining light to those still to come.
