‘Lisztomania’: What does Phoenix’s indie classic actually mean?
The late 2000s had a very specific indie and alt-rock sound, and Phoenix embodied that era’s energy better than most of their peers.
Though the French band has taken on several different forms over the past three decades, they were at the top of their game in 2009 following the release of Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. While they had already made a name for themselves, their fourth studio album carried a song that elevated their status immensely and made them a global name. Just as the digital era was beginning to take shape, ‘Lisztomania’ began spreading far and wide across the world in addition to receiving tons of airplay thanks to its amiable charm.
I was living in India at the time, and reliable sources to access the latest music from other countries were few and far between (at least the legal ones). Yet, this one somehow made it on my radar not long after it was published, and boy, did it have a lasting impression. Funnily enough, I had never even heard The Strokes back then, so Phoenix was essentially my introduction to a style that completely overhauled my sensibilities. With it being the perfect indie pop-rock tune, I firmly believe that people like me all over the world had the same damn reaction.
The vibrancy of ‘Lisztomania’ makes it one of those cuts that have such a fun and uncontroversial presence that you never really bother looking too deep into them. I certainly never treated it as anything more than an audio file that worked on me ten out of ten times, until I realised that it had been 15 years and I still didn’t know what the title meant. Of course, most people are familiar with ‘mania’ from its common usage in popular culture — Beatlemania, Hulkamania, WrestleMania — but Liszt?
It turns out the song was named after the actually insane fandom surrounding Hungarian composer Franz Liszt, who was such a big deal in Europe during the 1840s that women reportedly fought over his discarded dirty handkerchiefs. While reflecting on the musician’s visit to Paris, literary critic Heinrich Heine coined the term ‘Lisztomania’ in reference to the devout following. To that point, Phoenix even shot the music video for the hit at the Franz Liszt Museum in Germany.
The fact that a French band with American influences named their biggest piece after a Hungarian composer is what made the song in question such an international sensation. Even today, it doesn’t feel restricted to any particular cuisine, which in turn makes it easier to digest.
“We liked the idea that it’s just a mash-up, that our songs bring in influences from everywhere,” lead singer Thomas Mars told Express about the tune. “I think that Franz Liszt was one of them; there were other things, visuals. And maybe it was the fact that we grew up in Versailles, and we were surrounded by historical things. Maybe they came back that way.”
Despite the background of ‘Lisztomania’, the lyrics aren’t too complex or even focused on the title, for that matter; contrarily, they’re a little scatterbrained, which in fact adds to its lighthearted appeal.
Mars told Interview that he saw Liszt as “the first rock star,” which was enough to inspire the band to compose a song based on his allure. At the same time, it’s not really about the Hungarian legend, whose life seems to have given Phoenix some direction in their songwriting, following which they just sort of went off on a tangent. After all, the record’s casual mention of ‘jugulate’, which means killing someone by slicing their throat, doesn’t really pertain to the spectacular composer.
All in all, the inexactness of ‘Lisztomania’ ends up working in its favour.
