Diane Young

"Diane Young"
Single by Vampire Weekend
from the album Modern Vampires of the City
B-side	"Step"
Released	April 20, 2013 (2013-04-20)
Format	Digital download, 7-inch single
Genre	Indie rock
Length	2:40
Label	XL Recordings
Songwriter(s)	Ezra Koenig, Rostam Batmanglij
Producer(s)	Rostam Batmanglij, Ariel Rechtshaid
Vampire Weekend singles chronology
"White Sky" (2010) "Diane Young" (2013) "Ya Hey" (2013)
"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 two Saab 900s 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.

Personnel

• Ezra Koenig - lead vocals
• Rostam Batmanglij - piano, guitars, keyboards, backing vocals
• Chris Tomson - drums
• Chris Baio - bass
• Jeff Curtin - additional drums
• Adam Schatz - saxophone

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, two 900-series Saabs are shown burning. The opening lyric for the song, "You torched a Saab like a pile of leaves," served as the inspiration for the video.^[8] 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 Cam which films at 1000 frames per second.^[9] The video concept came from Vampire Weekend member Rostam Batmanglij's friend Borna Sammak, and was filmed while the band was performing at SXSW.^[10] 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.^[11][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 video parodies Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper, depicting a dinner party that becomes progressively chaotic, attended by members of the band and other guests. An unidentified and disinterested man wearing a balaclava (possibly a reference to their song "Horchata"), analogous to Jesus in The Last Supper, is at the party (and video's) center. In the vampire weekend song, "Walcott", Ezra, the frontman is communicating with a man named Walcott who travels to Cape Cod in order to inform the mayor of the presence of vampires, this information is also partly gleaned from the vampire weekend movie trailer on Vimeo. In Walcott, Ezra tells Walcott to leave cape cod, it makes sense that Ezra is a vampire, as he wants Walcott to leave and stay off his turf. This can be attributed to the Diane Young music video is the man seen in the vampire weekend trailer is wearing a balaclava, meaning that he himself is Walcott, surrounded by vampires, but he doesn't know who the vampires are, or at least he does, but chooses to not speak. This is similar to the story of Jesus who, at the last supper was in the presence of a traitor. Hence Walcott=physcotic balaclava=Jesus and vampire=traitor.

Charts

References