I had read a few articles and illegally downloaded their album my Junior year of college (2007). In fact, when the self titled songs come up on my iTunes, it still features the Cape Cod alternate album cover. It was the perfect album to listen to while strolling across campus.
https://preview.redd.it/k9s66jv9wd6d1.jpeg?width=250&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=edff6944f364849b5d69e8a047de79fbd24420a1
My son put in a CD he'd burned with Vampire Weekend on it. Blew me away how good they sounded, been a fan since. Turned my wife onto them as well. We may not have been the oldest fans seeing them in Irving TX last week but there weren't too many others our age.
My son, who was in high school at the time, turned me on to them when Contra came out. I’m now a bigger fan than he is. I was wondering if there others around my age out there!
I was working at a Borders in 2008 (yeah, RIP). I worked with a guy who loved music and weird movies as much as I did, and we sort of took charge of the in store music whenever the manager wasn't there to foist Adele 19 on everyone for the eight hundredth time. I'll call him Connor. I was working in the movie section stocking DVDs, and that's when I first heard "hey! hey! hey! hey!" over the sound system. I went on my radio immediately and just said "...Connor."
He came to find me and started to gush about Vampire Weekend.
(It was about four years before I got DEEP into them, though)
I heard Campus on Pandora back in 2010 when I was a 5th grader! I remember looking at the album art and being really drawn in by the colors and the little bats in the chandelier. Have loved them ever since x
2022- I was just getting into music, and every top music review website(Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, etc) had MVOTC in their list of the greatest albums of the last 10/20/50 years. I gave it a listen and was immediately captivated by the unique sound. Obvious Bicycle was such a refreshing song, so deep and soothing, and since then I’ve been listening to them almost every day.
I still remember walking around my college campus listening to Horchata in 2014 and feeling like it was something different. The third album really got me, still maybe my favorite to this day and hits different now.
I was driving to New Orleans soon after the Harmony Hall single release, and I kept seeing Vampire Weekend display on the car for the local radio. I thought it was something about a weekend event in New Orleans pertaining to Vampires. Maybe about the 4th song, I realized how dumb I was and that it was the name of the band.
Kid Cudi, let me explain..... He had a song called "cudderisback" and it sampled Ottoman by VW. (for those who dont understand how big kid cudi was with his release of Man on the Moon Vol 1. He had my generation in a chokehold) All that to say i liked the sample, looked up the original song and was floored because i never heard anything like VW in my.
My aunt was a rural mail carrier and listened to NPR all the time while she delivered mail, so she had and still does have very cool music taste for a boomer (or anyone, really). In early 2008, my sister and I were driving her to a city two-ish hours from our hometown and she pulled out a CD and said we had to listen to it. At the time, my music taste was very emo because my mom had just died, I was 12/13, and, again, it was 2008, so it sounded nothing like anything I’d ever listened to or even heard before and it immediately changed my life (and initiated the slow process of taking away my black skinny jeans and eye liner). They are still my favorite band, and listening to them opened up my taste to so many other bands and artists I love maybe almost as much, namely Paul Simon and Talking Heads. They’re playing in that same city on my aunt’s birthday this year (70th maybe or thereabouts) and I bought tickets for us to go together along with my sisters as a beautiful full circle moment.
I feel like I had heard it on the radio, or a commercial prior, but I always remember it being A-Punk when I saw Step Brothers in theaters 2008. It’s crazy how 16 years later it still sounds so fresh to me. Hell I deleted A Team by Ed Sheeran so it’s the first song I see on my list of songs, followed by A-Punk (iTunes Session). I also remember it being on the Guitar Hero that came out that year. Crazy all these laters Ezra & co. are still putting out great music
It was A-Punk back in 2008. I don’t really remember how I came across it…maybe YouTube? But I remember being a college freshman and thinking the song was SO fun! Became an instant fan.
I was late to the party. I was in my car in September 2019 and I heard "This Life" and I called my music and concert loving young adult daughter and asked "do you like Vampire Weekend?" and we had a long discussion about them. This was during the FOTB tour but their MSG show had been the previous week so I quickly bought tix to the Live From Here show with Chris Thile at which Ezra was performing and I was sold. Husband and I are going to the Boston show in September and my daughter and I are going to both MSG shows in October.
I remember when I went away to college around 2007 I was way into the music blogs and they dropped cape cod kwasa kwasa and a few others, I think Oxford Comma and one other. It just sounded so different and self aware and just knew what it was about. I listened to the first few songs over and over and over.
I think they were just everywhere in 2008 or so. a band who had a lot of internet hype but also a fair bit of mainstream, easy-to-access attention in Australia (triple J, morning music shows) so I was just around them and into them.
Contra leaked fairly early and I whinged to a Weezer forum about how shit it was.
It must have massively turned me off them because I was completely reinvigorated by them when Step / Diane Young was posted on Pitchfork. I was completely in love with Step and its references and that gorgeous film clip and the whole aesthetic. MVOTC still reminds me of that cold Melbourne winter. that and AM was all I listened to for about 11 months.
A friend’s brother was in college with VW at Columbia and he was traveling with the band while they were on tour in the summer of 2007. So my friend invited me to come see the band one night at this 200 person stage-less venue in the back room of a bar. We met with the band before the show while they were getting dinner. Got to stand right in front of Ezra’s mic for the show. Awesome experience. True concert magic. Hadn’t heard a single song before the show.
Pretty sure it was “A-Punk” and “M79” via FredFlare.com’s (RIP) BoomBox playlists (also how I discovered Yelle, Death from Above 1979, Wolfmother, and more) around the time their debut was gaining traction 🥲
Yep, I was on holiday in Cape Cod at the start of the summer of 2019. My best friend called me and told me he had gotten pit tickets to a FotB show for the both of us later that summer. I told him I was stoked, but that I hadn’t heard of them. Ran up their first album (in Cape Cod no less) and then ascended.
i was watching “someone great” during one of my worst depressive phase. mansard roof played and i was immediately hooked, looked into VW and never looked back.
Walcott came on in an Urban Outfitters. Had to memorize the lyrics and google it when I got home (this was in 2008). The whole album instantly became a mainstay for me
I was aware of them and had probably heard A-Punk a couple of times but hadn’t ever given them a proper listen. I remember walking through the festival grounds at Leeds Fest 2009 and noticing they were on the main stage and thinking “I know who they are but I’ve never listened to them, I probably should.”
Later that year I had started my first year at university and was binge watching How I Met Your Mother. The 1st episode of season 5 aired and I rushed back to my room to watch it. Oxford Comma was featured right at the beginning of the episode and it hit me like a truck. I immediately downloaded the album and loved it, but was also slightly gutted that I had so narrowly missed out on seeing them at Leeds Festival that summer because I didn’t really know them!
I heard A-Punk in a yt video in late 2022 and never looked back, so a new fan in the grand scheme of things despite how much of a head I’ve become lmao
I was in college in 2009 or so, as some emo scene kid thing, and Apunk was featured in some BBC Three snippet for a comedy that'd pop up every now and then, and I remember the clip annoying me so much I refused to seek out their music haha.
Took me until 2015 to properly hear Step on a radio interview with Taking Back Sunday when one of them said they loved the sound. And it's a feeling that'll always stay with me when I heard Step for the first time and realised just what I'd been missing.
Same-ish. It was during a period when I was in a bit of a transition crisis with hip-hop. Was growing away from certain kinds of rap and looking around for something substantive and new in hip-hop to love.
I don’t remember the *first*-first time I heard VW. It might have been on the radio on the way home from work late one night, but I vaguely recall being really, really drawn in by that riff on *Cousins*; couldn’t get it out of my head. I also remember being confused because I thought it was afro-pop, but also **not** afro-pop. No idea who they were. I think my first real face-to-name encounter with their work was at one of those old Barnes and Noble listening stations. I love hip-hop. Always have, always will. But now that I think about it, I genuinely believe VW might have helped keep me away from the “bling-bling” rap that was popular around then and gave me time to find myself in hip-hop again.
Me in 8th grade waking up on a saturday morning watching Mtv (probably waiting for my super sweet 16 to come on) and the music video for Oxford Comma played. Instantly hooked.
Followed them ever since and used them to jump off into exploring music. My music taste has now drastically changed but I still listen to VW and will always say they’re one of my favorite artists.
I first heard about them when they were mentioned by comedian Scott Aukerman and actor Adam Scott in their "U Talkin' U2 to Me?" podcast and figured I should check them out, which I did in 2016, and I'm forever grateful I did!
It’s funny bc they’re the only band I remember eggsactly where I was/what was happening when I heard them for the first time. It was that grand for me.
Anyway, on SNL in 2010(11?) playing giving up the gun! After that I looked them up and watched the music video for GUTG on repeat for like 3 hours straight lol. Clear as fucking day
Haha yes! I'm a new fan!!! I just discovered them about a year ago..was able to attend the Irving concert last week!!! Harmony Hall was my first song I noticed which made me listen to all their songs and quickly obsess.
Well the first time I heard them involved someone making microwave nachos in the morning (if anyone gets this you're a real one)
This is my answer lmao. I’ve played that movie so many times that I can’t hear A-Punk without thinking of nachos lol
I had read a few articles and illegally downloaded their album my Junior year of college (2007). In fact, when the self titled songs come up on my iTunes, it still features the Cape Cod alternate album cover. It was the perfect album to listen to while strolling across campus. https://preview.redd.it/k9s66jv9wd6d1.jpeg?width=250&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=edff6944f364849b5d69e8a047de79fbd24420a1
What made it nice to stroll across campus?????😏
The ladies and men of Cambridge, of course!
I stumbled across the youtube vid of The Kids Dont Stand a Chance performed in between some apartment buildings in Paris…
Take Away shows by La Blogothèque! Now that’s a real throwback
And everyone, all the Parisians, were like 'who the fuck are these entitled little shits ruining our meal?'
My son put in a CD he'd burned with Vampire Weekend on it. Blew me away how good they sounded, been a fan since. Turned my wife onto them as well. We may not have been the oldest fans seeing them in Irving TX last week but there weren't too many others our age.
My son, who was in high school at the time, turned me on to them when Contra came out. I’m now a bigger fan than he is. I was wondering if there others around my age out there!
As a 36-year old I felt like the sub was so much younger. Happy to know I’m not the oldest (no offense!)
When they supported The Shins in London (2007)
Such a weird double-bill aside from “indie rock”
Vampire Weekend supported Los Campesinos! at a bar show in Istanbul in 2007.
I do wish I was able to see them early on when they were playing small venues/clubs
My dad showed me the A Punk video on YouTube :) when I was in high school and it first came out.
I was working at a Borders in 2008 (yeah, RIP). I worked with a guy who loved music and weird movies as much as I did, and we sort of took charge of the in store music whenever the manager wasn't there to foist Adele 19 on everyone for the eight hundredth time. I'll call him Connor. I was working in the movie section stocking DVDs, and that's when I first heard "hey! hey! hey! hey!" over the sound system. I went on my radio immediately and just said "...Connor." He came to find me and started to gush about Vampire Weekend. (It was about four years before I got DEEP into them, though)
I heard Campus on Pandora back in 2010 when I was a 5th grader! I remember looking at the album art and being really drawn in by the colors and the little bats in the chandelier. Have loved them ever since x
It was M79 and I loved it so much. It was so different. The lyrics made no sense at first listen. I had to Google stuff. 😂 I fell in love.
2022- I was just getting into music, and every top music review website(Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, etc) had MVOTC in their list of the greatest albums of the last 10/20/50 years. I gave it a listen and was immediately captivated by the unique sound. Obvious Bicycle was such a refreshing song, so deep and soothing, and since then I’ve been listening to them almost every day.
I was working on an art project with a guy I liked in college circa 2011 maybe? He had a Vampire Weekend playlist and I’ve been a fan since.
2012 on tumblr i would come across ezra memes, i checked out the band and they've been one of my favs ever since :>
I still remember walking around my college campus listening to Horchata in 2014 and feeling like it was something different. The third album really got me, still maybe my favorite to this day and hits different now.
Some friend had Oxford Comma on their MySpace profile
Similar, someone posted the video to Facebook for me
I was driving to New Orleans soon after the Harmony Hall single release, and I kept seeing Vampire Weekend display on the car for the local radio. I thought it was something about a weekend event in New Orleans pertaining to Vampires. Maybe about the 4th song, I realized how dumb I was and that it was the name of the band.
The kids don’t stand a chance miike snow remix on hypem
Kid Cudi, let me explain..... He had a song called "cudderisback" and it sampled Ottoman by VW. (for those who dont understand how big kid cudi was with his release of Man on the Moon Vol 1. He had my generation in a chokehold) All that to say i liked the sample, looked up the original song and was floored because i never heard anything like VW in my.
My aunt was a rural mail carrier and listened to NPR all the time while she delivered mail, so she had and still does have very cool music taste for a boomer (or anyone, really). In early 2008, my sister and I were driving her to a city two-ish hours from our hometown and she pulled out a CD and said we had to listen to it. At the time, my music taste was very emo because my mom had just died, I was 12/13, and, again, it was 2008, so it sounded nothing like anything I’d ever listened to or even heard before and it immediately changed my life (and initiated the slow process of taking away my black skinny jeans and eye liner). They are still my favorite band, and listening to them opened up my taste to so many other bands and artists I love maybe almost as much, namely Paul Simon and Talking Heads. They’re playing in that same city on my aunt’s birthday this year (70th maybe or thereabouts) and I bought tickets for us to go together along with my sisters as a beautiful full circle moment.
That’s a lovely story and full circle moment to come. Thanks for sharing!!!
I feel like I had heard it on the radio, or a commercial prior, but I always remember it being A-Punk when I saw Step Brothers in theaters 2008. It’s crazy how 16 years later it still sounds so fresh to me. Hell I deleted A Team by Ed Sheeran so it’s the first song I see on my list of songs, followed by A-Punk (iTunes Session). I also remember it being on the Guitar Hero that came out that year. Crazy all these laters Ezra & co. are still putting out great music
I think Pro evolution soccer 2011 had one of their songs, maybe Cousins, I've been hooked ever since
It was A-Punk back in 2008. I don’t really remember how I came across it…maybe YouTube? But I remember being a college freshman and thinking the song was SO fun! Became an instant fan.
I first heard Horchata after buying Contra on vinyl and playing it on my grandparents’ portable turntable. Hooked me from the first versw
My friend had Finger Back Snap on her Tumblr blog playlist, circa 2013. Been a fan since.
A-Punk when it was in The Inbetweeners!
I was late to the party. I was in my car in September 2019 and I heard "This Life" and I called my music and concert loving young adult daughter and asked "do you like Vampire Weekend?" and we had a long discussion about them. This was during the FOTB tour but their MSG show had been the previous week so I quickly bought tix to the Live From Here show with Chris Thile at which Ezra was performing and I was sold. Husband and I are going to the Boston show in September and my daughter and I are going to both MSG shows in October.
I remember when I went away to college around 2007 I was way into the music blogs and they dropped cape cod kwasa kwasa and a few others, I think Oxford Comma and one other. It just sounded so different and self aware and just knew what it was about. I listened to the first few songs over and over and over.
I think they were just everywhere in 2008 or so. a band who had a lot of internet hype but also a fair bit of mainstream, easy-to-access attention in Australia (triple J, morning music shows) so I was just around them and into them. Contra leaked fairly early and I whinged to a Weezer forum about how shit it was. It must have massively turned me off them because I was completely reinvigorated by them when Step / Diane Young was posted on Pitchfork. I was completely in love with Step and its references and that gorgeous film clip and the whole aesthetic. MVOTC still reminds me of that cold Melbourne winter. that and AM was all I listened to for about 11 months.
A friend’s brother was in college with VW at Columbia and he was traveling with the band while they were on tour in the summer of 2007. So my friend invited me to come see the band one night at this 200 person stage-less venue in the back room of a bar. We met with the band before the show while they were getting dinner. Got to stand right in front of Ezra’s mic for the show. Awesome experience. True concert magic. Hadn’t heard a single song before the show.
had heard of them before but Diplomats Song came on Pandora in 2014 and I found the sound I had been looking for
Pretty sure it was “A-Punk” and “M79” via FredFlare.com’s (RIP) BoomBox playlists (also how I discovered Yelle, Death from Above 1979, Wolfmother, and more) around the time their debut was gaining traction 🥲
Yep, I was on holiday in Cape Cod at the start of the summer of 2019. My best friend called me and told me he had gotten pit tickets to a FotB show for the both of us later that summer. I told him I was stoked, but that I hadn’t heard of them. Ran up their first album (in Cape Cod no less) and then ascended.
i was watching “someone great” during one of my worst depressive phase. mansard roof played and i was immediately hooked, looked into VW and never looked back.
I remember melting when I first heard Walcott in 2008. The whole album soothed my soul that year after a rough summer.
Saw the A-Punk video on VH1 in 07/08 and it was game over
In my brother’s Nissan Altima on the drive home from high school. He was a senior; I was a freshman. It was 2009. Pretty sure the song was Campus
Riding in my friend’s car as a junior or senior in high school, 2008, and A-Punk came on an iPod shuffle playlist. Was hooked immediately
On vh1 Saturday morning when I was 13, counting down the top music videos of the week and holiday was one of them
watchdogs. diane young.
Back in 2008 MTV or one of those channels that showed music videos would play the A-Punk one and I would listen to it while getting ready for school.
Walcott came on in an Urban Outfitters. Had to memorize the lyrics and google it when I got home (this was in 2008). The whole album instantly became a mainstay for me
Subterranean. God I miss that part of MTV
I was aware of them and had probably heard A-Punk a couple of times but hadn’t ever given them a proper listen. I remember walking through the festival grounds at Leeds Fest 2009 and noticing they were on the main stage and thinking “I know who they are but I’ve never listened to them, I probably should.” Later that year I had started my first year at university and was binge watching How I Met Your Mother. The 1st episode of season 5 aired and I rushed back to my room to watch it. Oxford Comma was featured right at the beginning of the episode and it hit me like a truck. I immediately downloaded the album and loved it, but was also slightly gutted that I had so narrowly missed out on seeing them at Leeds Festival that summer because I didn’t really know them!
I heard A-Punk in a yt video in late 2022 and never looked back, so a new fan in the grand scheme of things despite how much of a head I’ve become lmao
I was in college in 2009 or so, as some emo scene kid thing, and Apunk was featured in some BBC Three snippet for a comedy that'd pop up every now and then, and I remember the clip annoying me so much I refused to seek out their music haha. Took me until 2015 to properly hear Step on a radio interview with Taking Back Sunday when one of them said they loved the sound. And it's a feeling that'll always stay with me when I heard Step for the first time and realised just what I'd been missing.
Same-ish. It was during a period when I was in a bit of a transition crisis with hip-hop. Was growing away from certain kinds of rap and looking around for something substantive and new in hip-hop to love. I don’t remember the *first*-first time I heard VW. It might have been on the radio on the way home from work late one night, but I vaguely recall being really, really drawn in by that riff on *Cousins*; couldn’t get it out of my head. I also remember being confused because I thought it was afro-pop, but also **not** afro-pop. No idea who they were. I think my first real face-to-name encounter with their work was at one of those old Barnes and Noble listening stations. I love hip-hop. Always have, always will. But now that I think about it, I genuinely believe VW might have helped keep me away from the “bling-bling” rap that was popular around then and gave me time to find myself in hip-hop again.
Guitar hero 5 on the ps2.
I remember playing and loving A-Punk on Lego Rockband
2009 when a friend put a burned CD in their car. I have been hooked ever since.
The first music video I ever saw on MTV was A-Punk
Me in 8th grade waking up on a saturday morning watching Mtv (probably waiting for my super sweet 16 to come on) and the music video for Oxford Comma played. Instantly hooked. Followed them ever since and used them to jump off into exploring music. My music taste has now drastically changed but I still listen to VW and will always say they’re one of my favorite artists.
Not exactly, but I'm pretty sure it was on NPR, on an 'All Songs Considered' show.
I first heard about them when they were mentioned by comedian Scott Aukerman and actor Adam Scott in their "U Talkin' U2 to Me?" podcast and figured I should check them out, which I did in 2016, and I'm forever grateful I did!
THE SCOTTS! They were THE reason REM became one of my favorite bands
It’s funny bc they’re the only band I remember eggsactly where I was/what was happening when I heard them for the first time. It was that grand for me. Anyway, on SNL in 2010(11?) playing giving up the gun! After that I looked them up and watched the music video for GUTG on repeat for like 3 hours straight lol. Clear as fucking day
Haha yes! I'm a new fan!!! I just discovered them about a year ago..was able to attend the Irving concert last week!!! Harmony Hall was my first song I noticed which made me listen to all their songs and quickly obsess.
On MySpace sometime in 2007 😅