Say it again: How Yeah Yeah Yeahs use repetition to convey true meaning in music
In a true sign of the times comment, Pink Panthress recently addressed the speedy nature of her music by stating, “A song doesn’t need to be longer than two minutes 30.” While I’m no prog-rock fan, spiralling into a fit of rage at the thought of epic songs becoming antiquated, I am concerned with the wider impact this comment has on songwriting.
It speaks to this very current desire for everything to be digestible, or bite-sized, so as not to slow us down in life. But isn’t that the antithesis of art? Good art does, in fact, slow us down and enter us into some sort of transcendent state where the monotonous routine of modern life slowly pales into insignificance.
The very best songs have seemingly rebelled against an institutionally pushed formula, which is perhaps, rather ironically, why Pink Panthress has done so well in 2025. Her sub-three-minute rule hasn’t universally caught on yet, and so she is currently operating in a state of musical rebellion, where her music is playing by a rulebook written only by herself.
But soon, the industry will catch on, and we will be stuck in a homogenised landscape of super-fast music that makes the slow process of unravelling emotions an antiquated entity. It’s happened before, pop culture rules being set to ensure a song becomes a mammoth hit. And perhaps there have been none more successful than repeated vocal hooks.
Outkast stepped out of that high art realm with ‘Hey Ya’, a song whose repeated yell of the title line had it embedded into the social consciousness upon instant listen. Then there is ‘Sweet Caroline’, which has simply become a universal sing-along anthem because of how fundamentally memorable the chorus is. Simply put, repeating a musical structure until you have simply no option but to memorise it is an exhausted trope in the realms of pop music.
On first glance, Karen O adopted that very same method on the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ iconic track ‘Maps’. Karen O’s “Wait, they don’t love you like I love you” repeats throughout the song, as the underlying motif of vulnerability and heartache rings through.
But in actual fact, the repetition of the chorus line was designed to highlight the repetitive cycle both Karen O found herself in, as she spiralled into a pit of longing for her ex-partner, Angus Andrew, the lead singer of the band Liars.
“‘Maps’ is the ultimate ‘you are always on my mind’-type song,” she told Mojo. “Unfortunately, there is never enough humour in the feeling of missing someone; ‘Maps’ just indulges that emotion.”
There is a sense of yearning throughout the song, with Karen O stripping herself of the perceived coolness of not caring, to instead adopt an approach of desperate pleading for the subject to simply stay. The song subsequently became an earworm, achieving overwhelming cult success but not because of how Karen O designed it, but rather because of its relatability. The chorus line stuck in the heads of its listeners, just as Andrew did for her.
While she has since remarked on her own fascination with the song’s success, proving its design was far from a commercial triumph, she’s ultimately grown proud of the fact that something so profound has been so universally adored.
She simply remarked, “It’s a love song, and there’s just not a lot of bands that have one of their biggest songs as a love song. So I’m pretty stoked about that.”
