The Teenagers – An In Depth Interview

The Teenagers’ new album “Reality Check” is out today in the USA. Are you going to buy it, or just steal it? I mean, you wasted your money on rap CDs and korn CDs when you were young. I’ll probably buy it because I am a proponent of the theory that ‘If you really like a band, you will own a hard copy of their CD, even though you already have the mp3s downloaded.’

You can buy the Teenagers’ new album at insound to make up for the pile of crappy CDs in your closet that you bought from ages 10-17.

[Please note: There are embedded music files in this post that may not work in your RSS Reader]

I know what a small minority of you are thinking… “Why the hell is this blog all up on the Teenagers’ cocks? Are u ghey, or what? Plus they’re like really old already. They’ve been around for like a year. That’s like 10 years in blog-years.”

While I answer this question for the sake of spelling out why I appreciate the Teenagers, why don’t you take some time to revisit the first Teenagers song you ever heard, “Homecoming.”

So the problem with music blogs are that they’re written by some ass hole who doesn’t even know that much about music. Most of the time, it’s just some really sad dude who wastes his money on mp3 hosting just for people to come to the blog to download MP3s that they searched for on HypeMachine. In other cases, the robot behind the blog is the ’super fan’ type, who is looking to justify his existence that revolves around indie music/getting into clubs/being able to exchange myspace messages with his or her favourite bands and getting free crappy CDs in the mail or your inbox. Or maybe you’re a fan of the arbiters of cool who take on the ‘blog/record label/promoter’ hybrid business model.

So it’s tough to tell what to think when a blog [HIGHLY RECS] a song or an artist. Do you think music bloggers lie to you? Do you think they’re just posting stuff because it will get them more hits? What incentive do they have to use their relatively small voice to endorse a band? Do music bloggers make it difficult to tell the difference between various posts because it’s always just a neon picture + ‘they sound a lot like _____’ blurb structured post? Do the people behind music blogs even like music? Do they think it’s exciting and socially relevant? Or are blogs just competing to find ‘the next big thing’ based on what the last ‘big thing’ sounded like? (This phenomenon is also known as the PandaBear-ElGuincho theory) What makes music blogs useful? Do they really influence your taste and consumer mindset, or are they just storage portals for MP3s?

But we’d all have to admit, cherry picking single mp3s off blogs is pretty exciting. Having a the HypeMachine to track popularity is also great (unless there’s the occassional glitch of a Radiohead self-perpetuating-hype pyramid scheme). We value HypeMachine and some of us worship our GoogleReaders. What else would you do… go to BEST BUY to buy CDs of bands that have been around for over a year? The only idiots who still buy CDs are people who listen to country music or Christian music (Those same people buy their groceries and their music on their weekly trip to Wal Mart). The only idiots who buy music off iTunes are people who put their tastemaking trust in PerezHilton. iTunes is also pretty effective for dudes making 60K a year who like to ‘impulse buy’ artists that magazines/web magazines recommend.

But now there’s blogs to populate our iPods with songs for free. Fortunately for every one involved, especially the whole 2nd wave of electroblogs, HypeMachine came along to turn the blogs into a semi-relevant economy of Hype.

The newest mp3s are picked from myspace music pages, and delivered to a hungry crowd of listeners. We’re not interested in reading Pitchfork and finding out news about artists who added Tour Dates. We’re definitely not interested in hearing that a Canadian band is playing an Obama benefit. We just want free songs that sound fun, and maybe if we’re lucky we’ll be able to identify with the lyrical content.

The Teenagers have made songs that are fun, and if you are ’self-aware and relatively disenfranchised with fads, youth, meaningful crap, and relationships’, you should be able to appreciate them. And the truth is, there’s not a better time to be disenfranchised with fads, your consumer-driven formative years, meaningful crap, and relationships than today.

So yes, I REALLY LIKE THE TEENAGERS, and I have a blog that may lead you to believe that I do not have a credible ‘tastemaking opinion’ because I openly love the Teens. I might be an ass hole for being to able to identify their lyrics, and I do realize that the music itself isn’t any thing new or different than anything that’s been around before. But isn’t music all about recycling once popular sounds, anyways?

So there’s only a few bands who could approach this whole BLOG ERA HALL OF FAME, based on bands who wrote original songs, and also have a significant library of remixes. The Teenagers, Justice, Health, Chromeo, Klaxons, Van She, Crystal Castles, and Ratatat are some of the bands that pop into my head first when it comes to ‘bands that have extended their brand by engaging in the REMIX game, and actually coming out with songs that don’t sound like crap.’

I mean, c’mon… Teenagers LoFiFnk “City” Remix is easily one of the most uplifting, vulnerable, and danceable songs of the past 40 years.

I’d consider bands who do remixes AND get remixed to be kind of like two-sport athletes from the 80s and 90s. I’m sure we can all remember what a great marketing campaigns athletes like Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders had. There’s just something that’s just pretty respectable about the people who have the ability to expand their product lines for the sake of exposure.

Anyways, I like The Teenagers, and I think they’re certainly more relevant than most of the ‘0.1 hit wonder’ stuff that residents of Blogville are used to. Maybe being associated with the blog-fueled-hype era has given them a bad reputation when it comes to traditional outlets, or even the first-generation blogs who are still operating in the ‘we’re subsidiaries of Pitchfork’ mentality.

For some reason, it’s tough for people to decide whether the Teens are vastly different than or the exact same as other musical entities. That’s probably because the Teenagers have less in common with musicians who write traditional masterpieces in any genre, and more in common with those weird dudes from your high school who record ‘crappy electric guitar and electronic music with weiiird lyrics, and put it up on myspace.’ They patched “Homecoming” together on their computers, put it on myspace, and now I think it’s safe to call them one of the most successful ‘we posted a song on myspace’ bands of all time. So please don’t hold it against me if I’m way more into the Teens backstory than ‘we played live in front of some record executives for EMI, and they enslaved us into a record deal.’

I buy into the Teenagers. In my eyes, they are a complete product, and they create media that’s more interesting than most of the music/art/other expressive crap that I’ve been told I’m supposed to appreciate during my lifetime.

Anyways. Here’s the interview. If you like the Teenagers and/or HIPSTERRUNOFF, you’ll probably enjoy it.

HRO: So let’s start off with the question that every interviewer asks at the beginning of every interview with a band… How are the Teenagers going to break up?
TNGRS: I think there are many possible answers:
1) We’re gonna have a massive fight about changing our name cause we turn 30. Do you think we should change it? 2) One of us is gonna quit to have a family. 3) We will just stop after our debut album cause its cool.
HRO: So who would you say is the Teenager most likely to start to date a Yoko Ono-type of girl who tears the band apart?
TNGRS: I would say Michael will go to live in California with a pornstar.
HRO: He looks like the type. It’s pretty interesting how you proposed a theory about stopping after your debut album. I feel like over time, it’s better for some bands to ‘only have 1 album’ that leave you wondering ‘what might have been?’ I think the Teenagers could definitely pull in some of the critics who don’t take your music seriously if you did that. Kind of like Joy Division, you know.
TNGRS: Well I don’t know. We’re young I think we’re gonna do another one. There’s already Test Icicles who have done that recently, so it’s not really fun.
HRO: Yeah. It’s always important to look on the bright side. There’s always the ‘Joy Division–>New Order’ theory in case Quentin dies. And you could also say that there’s the ‘Simian-Simian Mobile Disco-Black Ghosts’ theory in case you all start to hate each other on the next tour. There is life after death.
TNGRS: Or we could all die in a RyanAir plane and become famous. We would be sexy–the Ryan Air Death.
HRO: I feel like the Teenagers came along when there’s been the perfect storm for this type of content. People are eager to hear new & different music, and there are perfect outlets to get exposure. But then on the other side, people want everything for free, so it’s like ‘what the hell do you do?’ So how have the Teenagers utilized this internet era, and what are the biggest challenges?
TNGRS: When we started, we didn’t think about anything. You know, we started just for fun so we were just chilling out doing songs at home, and then when we did “Homecoming,” it became quite bigger than we were expecting. I think it was the idea to put music on Myspace for free, just for fun you know, to see how people react… but then labels started to give us money, so we were like “why not, you know?” I think the music will be free soon anyway, people wont pay for long, every thing is becoming free. Tv, cable, internet, phone, sms. At least you think its free…maybe someday some brand will give money to bands and release their albums for free everywhere… internet , cds…with a big sticker on it. COCA COLA LOVES LADYHAWKE, you know that kind of stuff.

HRO: Yeah. I think that’s a pretty fair trade off. I’m looking forward to the day when I open up the Teenagers application on my iPhone, and if you made a new song, and all I have to do to download it is watch a 15 second Sprite ad.
TNGRS: Haha. That would be so weird. You should create an orange juice called REMIX and market it sending remixes on people phones all around the world. “The coolest orange juice.”
HRO: I think I’ll write that business proposal for whatever company makes SUNNY DELIGHT. Do they have that in Europe?
TNGRS: Yeah. It’s disgusting. I dont know if there’s any actual oranges in that. Van She Tech (sunny delight remix) sounds good.
HRO: I hear SunnyD+Vodka is the new Vodka + RedBull.
TNGRS: i dont even know why brands didnt start to buy bands actually. That should come soon because they have load more money than labels.
HRO: Yeah. It’s pretty interesting how the internet has kind of diluted the range of power and abilities that labels used to have. What’s the best way to support a band, like to actually get money into the band members’ pockets? Definitely not iTunes, right?
TNGRS: I dont think iTunes really works, not yet at least. I think iTunes mostly working in the US. We sold quite few albums on that already, but in Europe people are more apprehensive and its not really working yet. I think the best way to support bands is to go to their shows.
HRO: Financially, or emotionally?
TNGRS: Both.
HRO: So how challenging was it to transition from the whole ‘bedroom musician’ to ‘live band that’s playing large scale music festivals’?
TNGRS: Man, it was very challenging. We signed our deal with the label and with our tour agent before we ever started to rehearse. We just recorded the songs in the computer so you know we had to learn how to play them and then rehearse…then we started to play , the three of us with an ipod and it was bad. The iPod era was funny. We can say now, “We played using with an ipod on stage,” but it’s bad… so now for the live we play with a drummer and a guitarist. Both girls. Lovely girls. And it sounds much better.
HRO: Yeah. I think the blog has had some comments on some posts that were about the Teenagers about how they weren’t satisfied by your live performances. But I feel like the Teenagers create a pretty invaluable ‘iPod experience’ which is pretty important to young people on a daily basis. It’s just challenging because the most money isn’t really in the digital sales, it’s more about ‘creating that rare live experience’, so you can sell out arenas like U2.
TNGRS: Haha. So the challenge is to play in arenas. Exactly. Someday… with a new iPod. Cause if we play arenas, people will find it funny if we use an iPod.
HRO: Do you think you’d ever consider moving your live performance to be less like a ‘traditional band’ and more like an ‘art performance’ where a song will never be exactly the same twice? For some reason, I can just imagine myself really enjoying the Teenagers working samplers into their live show, kind of like Panda Bear/Animal Collective.
TNGRS: I never really thought about that before but thats a good idea to try yeah. Could be cool actually.
HRO: Yeah. I think it could kind of highlight/preserve the ‘danciness’ or some of the songs, and maybe add that whole ‘artsy’ aspect that people like to appreciate at shows. But yeah. I kind of feel like the Teenagers provide a unique ‘ white earbud experience,’ like the experience that listeners get when they listen to your songs their personal iPods. The Teenagers are poppy, interesting vocals, and a great choice to tell people you listen to when they ask you ‘what’s on your iPod?’ and you want to sound cool.
TNGRS: Haha. I hope people play it in the streets and feel strong.
HRO: I’ve definitely listened to “Wheel of Fortune” many times when I’m feeling down, and it turns my day around. It lets me know that nothing matters, and nothing means anything, so I shouldn’t even really worry about anything.

TNGRS: I’m happy about that. Life’s just a wheel of fortune. For real.
HRO: I’m sure I’d understand the concept better if I had a band that made a pretty catchy song, made a myspace, then ended up being flown to different parts of the world to play their songs.
TNGRS: haha maybe. But soon you’ll do 70 000 dollars a month with advert on your blog, and we will be still touring in a van.

HRO: We’ll see. We’re all just trying to fool the world into thinking that we’re ‘real’ and ‘worth paying for.’ So who is the main lyrical force in the Teenagers, and who is the main musical force? And is there like one member who is ‘the best’ at playing live?
TNGRS: Quentin is the most lyrical, but we write the songs together , and I compose the music, Michael helps me. Live, we’re all on the same level I’d say. Nobody can play solos, either bass, vocals or guitars. Haha.
HRO: Yeah. I mean, I’m DEFINITELY in the minority, but I feel like musicianship is the least important part of determining ‘how much I like a band’.
So with ‘Reality Check’ you worked with a guy who produce
d The Strokes, who as far as I can tell, are all ‘really good at their instruments.’ What’s it like to record with a REAL PRODUCER? Is it awkward at first, or did he ever make you feel like you weren’t a real band?
TNGRS: Yeah,we worked with Gordon, but all the album has been produced by lexxx. We didn’t keep the work we did with Gordon. Lexxx sounded more like we wanted, but to work with gordon was a really good experience for sure. We were quite scared going to the studio the first day. Like you know he recorded Nick Valensi’s guitars, and he never made us feel like we’re not in a real band. He was very helpful and understanding, and it was easy to work with him. No pressure at all. For Lexxx it was the same. He engineered Madonna, Gwen Stefani, Justin Timberlake…all those famous people. So it was a bit scary before we met him. But he’s so nice and cool. It was really a pleasure to work with him.

[Pictured: Nick Valensi, a 'real' guitarist]

HRO: How do you feel about so many people being outraged about “Sleeping Bag (Yo Version)” and “Self Love” being left off REALITY CHECK?

TNGRS: I think that “Self Love” and “Sleeping Bag” are just the songs we dont like that much… so you know…
HRO: Haha. Yeah. They’re pretty FIRST GENERATION Teenagers. But sometimes people hold on to the oldies.
TNGRS: Exactly. Some fans could say later, “I was listening to selflove, you know, the first songs…”
HRO: So did Quentin sleep with all of the girls in ‘Self Love’?
TNGRS: Haha. No, it’s a mix of friends.
HRO: Oh interesting. I apologize in advance for this next string of LYRICAL ANALYSIS questions, but I think people just find it interesting to ‘get the meaning of the lyrics of their favourite bands’. Kind of like that show ‘Vh1: Storytellers’. …What’s the deal with KITTEN MASKS in “Streets of Paris”?

TNGRS: Haha. If you look on myspace, on one of our first pics, the three individual pictures, Quentin has a kitten mask, so that picture is from the “Streets of Paris” night. The whole story happened, we were so fucking scared… and he was wearing a kitten mask..
[Spotted: The Kitten Mask from "Streets of Paris"]

HRO: Speaking of MYSPACE interactions. “Fuck Nicole” was written about one of your first friends on myspace, right? Is there any way you could link me to her myspace so I can be friends with her?
TNGRS: Man, we have no idea where she is cause Quentin denied her, said: “Fuck Nicole, I dont know her.” We just remember she was English and blonde.
HRO: Are you sure it wasn’t one of those porno ads? like the porno friend requests of girls bending over, showing off their thong.
TNGRS: No, I’m not, but at that time there wasn’t a lot of that. I’m sure she was real.
HRO: Haha
TNGRS: She wasnt hot if I remember…so… you know. Anyways, you should accept the porn requests. They’re real man, they showed me their thongs!
HRO: Is Pitchfork going to review “Reality Check”? What do you think they’ll give it? Do you think they’re going to pass harsh judgment on it, and say that “French Kiss” is about date rape?
TNGRS: Hmm… I don’t know if they’re gonna review it… and well, fuck i don’t know… do YOU think they will hate it ?
HRO: I feel like they’ll say it’s average, but mainly just use it as an opportunity to say ‘bands like the Teenagers aren’t real because they 1) can’t play solos 2) are ‘just a myspace band’ and 3) that they hate anything that the whole electro-blog subculture eats up.’
TNGRS: Hm… Yeah… We’re not ‘indie’ enough, maybe. Fuck indie.
HRO: Yeah. But I think if this was your only album, they’d appreciate it in 10 years, just as long as not too many people had heard it.
TNGRS: Haha maybe. I don’t know which is better: being reviewed badly by Pitchfork, or not being reviewed?
HRO: Yeah. I think it’s less important than ever, but it would be pretty still be funny to get an epically bad review from Pitchfork, just to tell your grand kids.
TNGRS: Hahaha. Well, we’ll see.
HRO: So would the Teenagers ever REMIX the Teenagers? I mean, I’m obviously just a super-fan, but I really do feel like you really end up turning an already-great song into an even better product. I feel like in the BLOG REMIX era, the Teenagers are certainly Hall of Famers. So it would just be pretty great to hear The Teenagers – Wheel Of Fortune (The Teenagers Remix) or something like that.
TNGRS: i think yeah. we will actually we did a remix of “Love no.” It will be the bonus track in Japan I think.. So we already did. I forgot that…
HRO: If this ‘interview’ has been meaningless and uninteresting so far, at least people got to find that out. I think it’s also pretty interesting how you aren’t necessarily the best at guitar/bass, but the remixes are all pretty high level. What’s the process behind making those? What programs do you generally work in to record/remix stuff?
TNGRS: We do remixes on Acid. It’s a bad program, I think, but it works well for me. Nobody uses ACID, i think, but its cool. It’s easy for loops and I just use vst synths.

HRO: So do you remix and get remixed by people who myspace message you? People you meet while on tour/festivals? Or do your labels negotiate it?
TNGRS: At the beginning it was myspace, now its the label and us to get remixed and to do remixes. We choose what we do.
HRO: Is there any message that you would send to all of the people who sent you a message wanting to remix you but you didn’t reply?
TNGRS: We try to reply to a lot of messages, but its just that we did a lot of remixes for homecoming. We’ve calmed down a bit now. Maybe later.
HRO: I don’t know French, but some one submitted this question: ” Qu’est-ce qui vous a pris de faire une interview avec CE “blogger”, en particulier?” Are they making fun of me/us :-( ?
TNGRS: No, they’re just asking why we agree to do an interview with a blog, and why hipster runoff? So i would say that we like H R, cause its funny everyday, and you seem to be really into statistics, and I love stats.
HRO: Do you think the Teenagers would be less successful if Dorian wasn’t AZN?
TNGRS: Hm… No, I don’t think so. Is it cool to be Asian? Since when? Justice?
HRO: Asian is the new black. Speaking of race relations… What’s up with some Europeans hating black people? Why do they make monkey noises at Thierry Henry?
TNGRS: Hahaha. It’s always been like that in football. It’s ridiculous. I love Henry.

HRO: So what are the Teenagers into? Sports? Video Games? Alcoholism? Recreational drug usage? Practicing their instruments? Trying to convince themselves that they are in love with sluts and starting relationships with them?
TNGRS: We are into eveyrything you just said. Video games, God yeah. Halo , pes, Skate. We love it. Michael is playing Halo 3 on XBOX live right now, and he’s winning against Americans right now. They’re pretty angry.
HRO: Did you play Nintendo when you were kids in France? Or is that only an American thing?
TNGRS: Yeah, of course. The NES. The Super NES. The 64. Mario Kart. GoldenEye.
HRO: Which character did you use in Mario Kart (SNES)?
TNGRS: Yoshi
HRO: I was pretty into TOAD.
TNGRS: Yeah, toad and Yoshi we
re the best. mario was ok though and princess
TNGRS: i hate when people play with bowser
HRO: Wait, actually I was into TOAD when I was young, but then now that I’m older, I use Mario
TNGRS: it sucks
HRO: Playing BATTLEMODE with Bowser or Donkey Kong is the worst.
TNGRS: haha yeah. Donkey. HORRRIBLE DONKEY
HRO: If you had to play Rainbow Road without falling off, which character would you have picked?

[Video Bonus: Remember Rainbow Road?]

TNGRS: hahah the Rainbow Road, man. Memories. I would take Yoshi. He’s the best.
HRO: Have you ever played any XBOX Live games against fans?
TNGRS: No, not yet we just got the live yesterday. I wish, dude. Our name is the teenagers.
HRO: I’m sure it’s annoying to see ‘You’ve just been killed by The Teenagers’.
TNGRS: Hahaha. We’re shit anyway. I don’t kill anyone.
HRO: So life is good for the Teenagers.
TNGRS: Tomorrow we release our album. We can’t even comprehend how crazy it is for us to release a real album all around the world. We’re really happy! We started recording vocals in my bathroom with a 10 euros mic, and now the record is released everywhere. You know what? We recorded “Homecoming” like that on the 10 euros mic, and it still the same version on the album, just mixed.
HRO: Yeah. It really is a pretty great story. I do think if every one could appreciate the Teenagers album, the world would be a better place.
TNGRS: Haha, thx. I think so, too. Let’s have some fun in 2008. Boys just wanna have fun.

Buy Reality Check at Insound:
http://www.insound.com/The_Teenagers_Reality_Check_CD/productmain/p/INS41855/
http://www.insound.com/The_Teenagers_Reality_Check_CD/productmain/p/INS41855/
http://www.insound.com/The_Teenagers_Reality_Check_CD/productmain/p/INS41855/

Send the Teenagers a Friend Request (The first band to make a social network joke in a song without sounding tooo gimmicky)
http://www.myspace.com/theteenagers

[MP3s That You Probably already have]
Lo Fi Fnk City (The Teenagers Remix)
The Teenagers Love No (Delorean Remix)
The Teenagers Homecoming
The Teenagers Sleeping Bag (Yo Version)
Air Mer du Japon (Teenagers Remix)