Diane Young

"Diane Young"
Single by Vampire Weekend
from the album Modern Vampires of the City
B-side	"Step"
Format	Digital download, 7-inch single
Genre	Indie rock
Length	2:40
Label	XL Recordings
Writer(s)	Ezra Koenig, Rostam Batmanglij
Producer(s)	Rostam Batmanglij, Ariel Rechtshaid
Vampire Weekend singles chronology
"White Sky" (2010) "Diane Young" (2013) "Ya Hey" (2013)

"Diane Young" is a song by American indie rock band Vampire Weekend, taken from their third studio album Modern Vampires of the City. It was released as the lead single from the album on April 20, 2013 through XL Recordings.^[1] A promotional video of the single, which features a car burning throughout the duration of the song, was uploaded to Vevo and YouTube on March 18, 2013.^[2] The official video to the single was uploaded on June 3, 2013.^[3]

Background

The band has since stated that the song title and concept is a play on the phrase "Dying young".^[4][5][6]

Commercial performance

To date, the single has peaked at #11 on the Billboard Alternative Songs chart.^[7] It has also reached #17 on the Billboard Hot Rock Songs chart and #50 on UK Singles Chart.

Music videos

The promotional video of "Diane Young", dubbed the "official stream", was uploaded on YouTube and VEVO on March 18, 2013. Throughout the duration of the video, a 900-series Saab can be seen burning (though two of them were used during production). The choice of the visual stems from the opening line of the song which is "You torched a Saab like a pile of leaves".^[8] There came allegations that the cars had been purchased under false pretenses and that the original owners had not been informed their cars would be destroyed. Vampire Weekend stated publicly that they were "stunned by the accusation", and denied any deliberate deceit in the purchase of the cars.^[9][10] According to an interview with The Peak radio station, the video for Diane Young was made with only five seconds of footage from a phantom camera which films at 1000 frames per second.^[11] The video concept came from Vampire Weekend member Rostam Batmanglij's friend Borna Sammak, and was filmed while the band was performing at SXSW.^[12]

The official video to "Diane Young" was uploaded to YouTube and Vevo on June 3, 2013. The video was directed by Primo Kahn and features cameos from Santigold, Chromeo, Sky Ferreira, Despot, Dave Longstreth from Dirty Projectors and Hamilton Leithauser from The Walkmen.^[13] The plot of the video is simple and mainly focuses on a man wearing a balaclava (possibly a reference to their song Horchata) texting and seemingly looking bored while the band interacts with guests at a dinner gathering that turns into a wild party. The number of dinner guests (thirteen), as well as their placement, and the general composition, seems to reference the The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci.

Charts

References