Yeah Yeah Yeahs have become the first band to shoot a music video at the top of New York City’s Empire State Building, with their music video for single ‘Despair’ being shot from a helicopter while the band performed on the 86th floor.
The band filmed the clip early in the morning, around 373 metres off the ground before the tower’s viewing platform on the 86th floor was open to the public.
“There’s been a lot of career highs and lows over the years of being in a band, but in the end, how many can say they shot a video on the top of the Empire State Building? We win,” says singer Karen O. “Move out the way, King Kong, Yeah Yeah Yeahs are gonna get real with you up in this piece!”
“It’s like the American dream for us, singing your song on top of the Empire State Building,” see added. “It’s hard to do something like that and not feel like it’s symbolic … Feeling like: man, where were we 10 years ago, when we were sitting around in some punk-rock dive bar, thinking about what to name our band … and now here we are at the top.”
Other than being the first music video shot atop the iconic New York landmark, it’s also the first time the 34-year-old singer has visited the summit of the legendary skyscraper. The same was true for the video’s director, Patrick Daughters. “I don’t like heights,” he explained.
According to Anthony E Malkin, president of the Empire State’s operators, many bands have applied in the past to shoot videos at the 23rd-tallest building in the world, but up until now nobody had been able to meet the strict production requirements.
“[The review] was not casual,” said Malkin. “[The video] had to be appropriate for the building.” But Malkin is still surprised it took 84 years for the first video to happen. “The Empire State Building’s iconographic presence is not limited to any date or age. We are happy to offer our magical canvas, the real magic of the real New York City, to this video. Credit to [Yeah Yeah Yeahs] for having the gumption to ask.”
‘Despair’ is the second single off the NYC-based trio’s album Mosquito, which entered the US Top 200 this April at #5.
Karen O explains that director Patrick Daughters has insider access with her, guitarist Nick Zinner and drummer Brian Chase, having shot earlier videos Maps and Gold Lion.
“I felt like I could give as personal a performance because of our history together,” says O. “It was important to us that it felt intimate despite being filmed at one of NYC’s most famous landmarks and an international cultural icon. It was my first-ever trip up to the top of the ESB, top of the world, we were up there from 3am to sunrise, I’m guessing very few get to see that view from up there at those hours.”
Mosquito is produced by Dave Sitek and Nick Launay (working separately), with one track produced by James Murphy. The bulk of it was recorded at Sonic Ranch in Tornilla, TX. Dr. Octagon (Kool Keith) appears on one track.
“I gotta say I had a ‘the impossible is possible’ moment up there with Nick and Brian,” says O. “If someone would have sat us down at the Mars Bar years back and told us that we’d be performing our music on the top of the Empire State Building one day, we probably would have thought that’s the stuff that dreams are made of, not us, no way.”
