About Vampire Weekend
Vampire Weekend is an American rock band formed in New York City in 2006 and currently signed to Columbia Records. The band was formed by lead vocalist and guitarist Ezra Koenig, multi-instrumentalist Rostam Batmanglij, drummer Chris Tomson, and bassist Chris Baio. Batmanglij departed the group in early 2016 but has continued to occasionally contribute to subsequent albums as a songwriter, producer, and musician.
The band's debut album, Vampire Weekend , incorporated elements of indie pop, Afropop, and chamber music. Featuring charting singles "A-Punk" and "Oxford Comma", it has been hailed as one of the greatest debut albums. Their sophomore album, Contra , was similarly acclaimed and garnered strong commercial success, debuting at number one on the US Billboard 200, and featuring well-received singles including "Holiday". Their subsequent studio albums Modern Vampires of the City and Father of the Bride continued the band's success, with each album receiving widespread critical acclaim, topping US charts and winning the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album in their respective years. They released their fifth studio album, Only God Was Above Us, on April 5, 2024 to universal acclaim.
The band members met while enrolled at Columbia University, beginning with a rap collaboration between Koenig, Tomson, and Koenig's roommate Andrew Kalaidjian named "L'Homme Run". They bonded over a shared love of punk rock and African music. Koenig toured with Dirty Projectors during a period of experimentation with African music, inspiring the band to incorporate world sounds into their earliest work. The band chose the name "Vampire Weekend" from the title of a short film project Koenig worked on during the summer between freshman and sophomore years in college. While home for the summer, Koenig watched the 1987 vampire film The Lost Boys and was inspired to make a Northeastern version of the film in which a man named Walcott travels to Cape Cod to warn the mayor that vampires are attacking the United States. Koenig abandoned the project after two days before editing the footage into a two-minute trailer during his senior year. The band began playing shows around Columbia University, starting with a battle of the bands at Lerner Hall in 2006. After graduating from college, the band self-produced their debut album while simultaneously working full-time jobs, Tomson as a music archivist and Koenig as a middle school English teacher.
In 2007, Vampire Weekend's song "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" was ranked 67th on Rolling Stone's list of the "100 Best Songs of the Year". In November 2007, they toured the UK with The Shins. The then-nascent influence of blog hype and internet buzz played a role in their success and led to a large prerelease following sufficient to support them performing on three tours before their debut album was released. They were declared "The Year's Best New Band" by Spin magazine in the March 2008 issue, and were the first band to be shot for the cover of the magazine before releasing their debut album. The band made a television appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman on February 1, 2008, and on March 8, 2008, performed on Saturday Night Live. Four songs from the band's first album also made the Triple J Hottest 100, 2008. The internet hype had its backlash, however, as critics reacted against a perceived image of Vampire Weekend as privileged, upper-class Ivy League graduates stealing from foreign musicians. One critic went so far as to call Vampire Weekend the "whitest band in the world", to which they took exception, given their Ukrainian, Persian, Italian, and Hungarian heritages. Koenig responded in a November 2009 interview by saying, "Nobody in our band is a WASP." Saying the backlash involving their social backgrounds was largely unfounded, Koenig claimed he paid for Columbia with a scholarship and student loans; he himself was still paying off student loans in 2009.
Self-titled Vampire Weekend, the band's first album was released on January 29, 2008. It received contemporary critical acclaim, being ranked number 430 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, and has been hailed as one of the greatest debut albums. It featured a blend of Afropop influences, indie pop, and chamber music elements. A success in the US and UK, it peaked at number 15 on the UK Albums Chart and number 17 on the Billboard 200 and had been certified Platinum in both countries. Four singles were released from the album; while "A-Punk" peaked at number 25 on the Billboard Modern rock chart and number 55 on the UK Singles Chart, "Oxford Comma" peaked at number 38 in the UK. "A-Punk" was ranked the 4th on Rolling Stone's Readers' Rock List: Best Songs of 2008. "A-Punk" was also used to open the Will Ferrell/John C. Reilly feature Step Brothers, and featured in the UK television show The Inbetweeners and the video games Guitar Hero 5, Just Dance 2 and Lego Rock Band.
The band's second album, Contra, was released on January 11, 2010, in the UK and the following day in the US, after being pushed back from the original release date for the fall of 2009. The album's first single, "Horchata", was released on October 5, 2009. The album's second single, "Cousins", was released as a single on November 17, 2009. Initial copies of the CD and LP sold at independent record stores in the US included a 3-track bonus CD containing two "melts", which featured bits of album tracks and a remix.
It is the band's first album to reach number one on the Billboard 200, and the 12th independently distributed album in history to reach the number one spot on the Billboard 200 since Nielsen Soundscan began recording data in 1991, while also being the first independent artist to have done so without ever having signed with a major label, after already established rock bands Radiohead and Pearl Jam and before Arcade Fire's The Suburbs. The album sold 124,000 copies in its first week and was awarded Gold by the RIAA on November 21, 2011, which means it has sold over 500,000 units in the US alone and over one million copies Worldwide. In 2010, it was awarded a diamond certification from the Independent Music Companies Association which indicated sales of at least 250,000 copies throughout Europe.
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