Best New Artist Grammy winners MGMT from Brooklyn discuss pop stardom, mocking Lady GaGa and finding a fanboy in Paul McCartney
Best New Artist Grammy winners MGMT from Brooklyn discuss pop stardom, mocking Lady GaGa and finding a fanboy in Paul McCartney Andrew VanWyngarden, vocalist and guitarist of Brooklyn band MGMT
It is the ultimate irony: 2007's Oracular Spectakular made them what they never wanted to be -- international popstars that are dating super models and sell loads of albums. Which the Brooklyn duo enjoyed, until it became too much -- and they even had to sue a certain Nicolas Sarkozy for using their music in his campaign for French presidency. So with their new album Congratulations, they are in fact hitting the breaks and heading for a less mainstream, but more weird, experimental direction. Vocalist Andrew VanWyngarden is more than happy to discuss in this interview.
How long did the new album take?
Making this new album was the therapy. By the end of last year, when we were mixing it and it had come out of our systems. (laughs)
Was touring the world and becoming popstars like you expected it to be?
It was not what we were expecting. We didn't really know what to expect at all. We hadn't really toured that much as a band and didn't know any bands that were on big labels or that had gone through the cycle of promoting an album for a major label. It took us by surprise. We had a lot of great times, but, it was still overwhelming and of kind of disorienting.
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You didnu00b4t take a break after the last tour despite your exhaustion.
We only took about 5 weeks off between tour and then making this album. Next time, we're definitely gonna to take a lot longer off. (laughs)
Can you actually be creative while on tour? Is there a mobile studio on your bus?
We just have laptops. The way I usually write things is just acoustic guitar and I think of progressions like that. And usually the ones that stick in my head and the lyrics and stuff are the keepers anyway so.
The success of the first album was just a happy accident after all?
Yeah. I mean, I'm incredibly grateful to be a musician. I hope that it'll continue. I hope we can keep making albums. We're excited, but also a little bit anxious about how people are gonna react to the new album, you know. Iu00b4ve been trying not to read anything about it. (chuckles) It kind of perplexes us, people's reaction. A lot of people are really offended by it, or think that we're trying to push people away or something. And that's just really not the case, you know.
In your case success was the ultimate irony, wasnu00b4t it? For one, all your dreams ("making music, making money, getting model girlfriends") came true, but then you couldnu00b4t really enjoy them?
Yeah, I mean it's really weird to think about just these songs that we wrote when we were crazy college kids and 19 to 21 years old. And just like taking the piss out of rock stardom and all this shit, and then all the sudden we're like, I don't know, doing some of the stuff that we said in the songs. It's kind of too bizarre to think about.
So how traumatic did your popstar-experience turn out to be? How surreal was it?
There were definitely some surreal moments like playing with Radiohead and meeting people like Michael Stipe, and Paul McCartney and these kind of huge names. But also getting to work with Sonic Boom, and being friends with Dan Treacy and Jennifer Herrema. It's just kind of crazy. If you had told me that 7 years later we would be producing an album with Sonic Boom, I would have been like: "Shut the hell up, what are you talking about?"
Is that what Congratulations is all about? Dealing with life in that bubble so to speak?
It's a little bit. It's about us specifically sometimes. It's a little bit in response to "Time To Pretend". It's like seeing it from the inside, seeing what it's actually like and being paranoid like worrying that having so many people around you telling you, you know, like: "Yeah, you guys are great!", and like taking care of things for you. And like worrying or wondering if you turned into somebody that you never wanted to be. Or when you're on the road, meeting lots of people you see people that act in a way (where) you're like: "Man, I never wanna act like that!" Like I never wanna take myself too seriously or act larger than life. Or like take advantage of people that are working for me. I think we really tried to stay aware of what was happening and stay grounded, and that song is just kind of about like seeing that threshold maybe.
Are you aiming at correcting that drug-and party-image of yours?
I don't know. A lot of people are trying to put that spin on it. Our band was kind of pegged as this partying, hipster, electro pop duo or something like that. We never identified with that, and that maybe made sense when you're talking about us like in 2003 or something. But when we're 27 years, people are expecting that kind of thing from us, it's a little bit weird.
Are there are no catchy songs like "Kids" or "Time To Pretend" on the new album on purpose?
These songs are catchy and they are pop songs. We don't understand when people talk about this album like it's like John Cage or something. (chuckles). Like it's some like unlistenable, experimental pretentious bull crap, because we think we're trying to make sweet, soulful pop music that's just a little bit bizarre. We're just not the kind of people as 27-year-olds who feel like sitting down, and making a kind of "happy-go-lucky-3-minute-electro-pop-song" right now. We're definitely not gonna do that just to try to make the band bigger or more successful. We just wanna make music that we like.
What is Lady Dada's Nightmare?
That song was more like inspired by kind of instrumental interludes on classic psychedelic albums, and some Beach Boys kind of Van Dyke Parks kind of little things. And when it came time to have a title for it, we thought that would be funny. It's like in many ways the opposite of what her music tries to do. (chuckles) But I think it's great. I mean, like I think it's very Goblin-inspired, and we just wanted to make something dark and, and menacing and pretty at the same time, you know.
Sheu00b4s (Lady GaGa) got a scary eagerness and ambition to her, hasnu00b4t she?
Eagerness and egoness. She is doing this pop culture experiment where to see like how massive she can get as a pop icon. And it's really about the imagery and the kind of like almost the philosophy of what pop is. I respect that, but, as cheesy and clichu00e9 as it sounds, for us it's just about making music that we like. And that's the first thing. The videos and the imagery and the fashion and that side of things comes next. It comes after the music.
We'll see how long she lasts and what her next album will be.
Yeah. I hope she has a long and fruitful career. It'd be cool tou2026 maybe we should collaborate, you know. (chuckles)
Would that be an option?
I love pop music. When we were mixing and writing this album, I was watching tons of video countdowns and mainstream pop videos. It would be cool to collaborate with artists in a kind of sincere way and just make a song to make an experiment in pop music, and not to sell billions of records or something like that.u00a0
At least itu00b4ll come with some cool outfits, wonu00b4t it?
Yeah, definitely cool outfits. (laughs)
What about Paul McCartney u2013 obviously a big fan of yours?
It's all really surreal. Obviously I love the Beatles and a lot of his solo stuff I think we kind read about him saying he was a fan, just kind of I read about randomly. And I was like: "Is that really happening?" And then all the sudden we were playing shows with him. And yeah, he put it out there that he would collaborate with us, and of course we were like: "Yes, yeah let's do it." And it just never happened. So I hope we can at some point.
And why a tribute to Brian Eno?
I think he deserves that. He's just been on the forefront of, of pushing pop music and experimenting and producing bands and mixing it with kind of the art world right from the beginning. We have nothing but respect for him. His music is some of the music that we, Ben and I, really bonded over to begin with in the first place. I mean, I think first of it was the albums that he produced for Talking Heads and then Roxy Music and then his solo albums, you know, "Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy)" and "Here Come The Warm Jets" and the "Fripp & Enos." So I mean there's just so muchu2026 His catalog is just unreal. Our song isn't inspired by Brian Eno musically at all. It could become a total fun light-hearted variety kind of song almost on the album like kind of in the spirit of The Kinks or Television Personalities just kind of taking the piss for fun And just coming from wanting to write a song called "Brian Eno" and rhyme it with "what does he know?"
Do you get him to be in the video with you?
That's our big goal right now. We still haven't heard back from him or any feedback, because I think he has the album. I don't know. I hope that he could play along and come in the video and be this kind of dark wizard of a musician in it or something. (chuckles)
Other than that you seem to have a passion for pretty obscure people - starting with TV Personalities, then Royal Trux, and not to forget Sonic Boom. At 27, how did you get into their music, and how did you get to know these people?
While I was in college, I was in three or four bands at a time. And if we weren't hanging out and playing music, we were at each other's houses for parties or something, it was kind of like a competition to see like who could find the coolest, older, obscure music, and like make mix CDs and bring it to people. I just kind of kept that spirit going. I found music that I really connected with and really loved. It's worked out in such a great way that we can meet a lot of these people. And that they somewhat unexpectedly are fans of our music and kind of respect what we're doing.
Some of them are heavily into drugs. You're surrounding yourself with a lot of people that have a heroin problemu2026
It is weird, yeah.
Yet, you donu00b4t have a problem yourself?
It's inspiring to see that theyu00b4ve kind of gotten through it for the most part and are still staying strong in a way. It's also kind of scary seeing how it, how years of drug abuse can affect people, and that makes us not want to develop drug habits whatsoever. I think that's obviously not the first thing we're thinking about when we connect with these people. It's really about the music that they've made. It's probably just troubled really smart eccentric minds and looking for a way to kind of escape kind of pains of life or something. I mean these people are like too smart for their own good. And depressed and confused and frustrated and so I don't know.
OK, I know there is a passion for surfing, but what about that cover artwork of yours u2013 the cat on a board? That is an art in its own right, isnu00b4t it?
Lowbrow.
How did you get into that? And how did you make friends with painter Anthony Ausgang?
He's a friend of Sonic Boom's. He did a couple of covers, or one cover for "Experimental Audio Research", which was Sonic Boom's kind of side project in the 90s. When we were in Malibu recording in this crazy house, Anthony came up a couple of times and just hung out with us, and was sketching and talking. He's a really kooky, amazing dude and brought his book up of paintings and gave us each one. Since he was there like listening to us record sometimes and hanging out, it made sense that his art would represent the music really well. There are a lot of moments on the new album that are real kind of cartoony kind of like Scooby Doo sounding in a way. That that the cartoony side of psychedelia is - from my experience with psychedelic drugs u2013 like a lot of the visions and the kind of like trips that I go on, are very cartoony and very kind of pop cartoony. Video gamey in a way. The cat on the surfboard is, is us. (chuckles) And we're just like, you know, we felt overwhelmed. We felt like paranoid and confused. And this album is just that period in our lives, and I think - like I said - it was therapeutic making it, and weu00b4re a little bit nervous because of how personal of a collection of music it is. And how it's about to be judged and criticised and released into the world. We went through something that was really amazing, but also kind of traumatic and this is just us dealing with it.
But a good surf works to get your head straight?
I've been a little over a year. I mean, it works as something that puts me into nature and the ocean. And especially when there's not many people out. It's just a very relaxing and distressing kind of thing. It's also like a challenge. You have so much to think about out there that you don't think about kind of problems in the world. Sometimes you're just thinking about surviving, sometimes you're thinking about it's all about timing and where you are and reading the ocean. I like that skill of learning about nature and how to judge it and read it and respect it. I usually go out for about 2, 2 u00bd hours or something.
Are you banned from France yet?
No, we were just in Paris for three days. We had a great time. It feels good that a lot of people there have heard our new record and really seem to appreciate itMaybe France is the place to be right now.
So Sarkozy really used "Kids" for his campaign u2013 without getting permission first? Which happens a lot, especially in America, I guessu2026
I think there's a big one like "Born In The USA". I forgot which politician used that. It's weird because thatu00b4s not the most positive song towards America. It's a little dark. We really don't try to get involved politically with stuff with our music. It was just that they were using our song without permission and also trying to kind of pass laws that would punish people for illegally downloading music and that kind of thing. It just felt wrong to do that, so we tried to make a point of it.
How much did you sue Sarkozy for?
I think it was an out of court settlement, it wasnu00b4t ever a lawsuit. We, we ended up donating a lot of it to, to relief fund in Haiti and, yeah, a couple of other things. It all went to a good use.
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