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Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin

Ezra Koenig (Part 1)

Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin

Rick Rubin

Society & Culture, Arts, Philosophy

4.6908 Ratings

🗓️ 3 July 2024

⏱️ 119 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Ezra Koenig is the lead vocalist, guitarist, and songwriter of the band Vampire Weekend. He co-founded the group in 2006 while attending Columbia University. Vampire Weekend has released several critically acclaimed and commercially successful albums, blending indie rock with elements of world music. Beyond his work with Vampire Weekend, he is the creator and host of the radio show “Time Crisis” on Apple Music’s Beats 1. He has collaborated with various artists across different genres, such as Major Lazer, Charli XCX, and Beyonce, notably co-writing and co-producing the song “Hold Up” on Beyoncé’s critically acclaimed album “Lemonade.” He has been involved in various other creative projects, including an animated series called “Neo Yokio,” which features the voice talents of Jaden Smith, Jude Law, and Susan Sarandon, among others, and premiered on Netflix in 2017. ------ Thank you to the sponsors that fuel our podcast and our team: LMNT Electrolytes https://drinklmnt.com/tetra ------ Squarespace https://squarespace.com/tetra ------ Lucy https://lucy.co/tetra ------ House of Macadamias https://www.houseofmacadamias.com/tetra

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Tetragrammaton.

0:05.0

Tetracketka.

0:07.0

It really was, you know, at the buzzer, like the final semester of college.

0:27.3

And I think I was starting to have some anxiety about like, what am I going to do?

0:32.8

I didn't have a ton of direction the way that some of my peers did. And I had the, I don't know, I had this name Vampire Weekend for a while,

0:40.3

but that was the first time we got together and we had like a rehearsal

0:44.3

and it was the original four members and we played a Battle of the Bands.

0:49.3

That's when it became a real band, I guess.

0:50.3

Did the band come together for the Battle of the Band's or it already existed? It kind of came together. We all known each other and maybe in different capacities had done

0:59.0

music, but at that moment, and maybe we all had it, but I certainly had this feeling like

1:04.0

kind of need to start something more legitimate, but also there was a vibe. I had this idea

1:09.0

for a kind of like preppy band, you know, and I even like wrote a little

1:14.7

bit about it to organize my ideas.

1:17.2

And luckily, I, you know, I found the perfect collaborators, people who took those ideas

1:21.9

and ran with them.

1:22.9

And yeah, and also there were a couple songs.

1:26.5

And the song I always think of is kind of the first Vampire Weekend song was Oxford

1:32.3

comma, because I'd written it in the months before the band started, and it so clearly to me

1:38.3

represented what the band might be. You know, so we played it at our first rehearsal and it felt like,

1:47.0

everything from like the title of the song to like the vibe, it just kind of felt like, all right,

1:51.5

this is, it's not just, hey guys, wouldn't it be cool to jam together? It had a vision.

1:56.0

How seriously did you take the idea of the band? Like, did you think this is going to be my full-time job,

...

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