It's not like we wanted to get really political in terms of specific causes, but I think a lot of the lyrics deal with paranoia and feeling like "the man" is in control somehow.
Andrew VanWyngardenWe like being ridiculous and I think that's lost on a lot of people, or they think we're coming from this super serious angle, and that's too bad, really.
Andrew VanWyngardenWe're really into combining lots of different styles into one song: that's normal for us. It might seem arbitrary but we listen to a lot of music that does that.
Andrew VanWyngardenThe main reason we didn't break up is because we weren't really a college band. We were just, two dudes who were messing around with music. We never played off-campus except for once or twice. We never had any ambitions to make it as a band after college, or anything like that. So that probably worked in our favor. We never took anything seriously, we still don't!
Andrew VanWyngardenI think things like YouTube and Twitter are really cool and really good in some ways, but the fact that the news is cutting to a YouTube clip on national TV, I think is really weird.
Andrew VanWyngardenWe were thinking about how other people deal with this career on every song. We got to meet people like Thom Yorke and hear him say how it's never normal when fans just come up to you. It's always a strange job. We don't want to come off like we're pitying ourselves for having this job because it's really amazing in a lot of ways. But there's a lot of stuff that comes with it that we're not really comfortable with.
Andrew VanWyngarden