“You torched a Saab like a pile of leaves/I’d gone to find some better wheels”
These are the first lines from Vampire Weekend’s newest single, “Diane Young.” So what is so controversial about it? Nothing whatsoever, until you view the music video for the song. Warning: NSFW. Not because of the graphic content, however. I’m just concerned some of you might howl in anger once you press play and upset your fellow coworkers. You’ve been warned.
So here we are. Yes, you just watched a video that solely consisted of Saabs dying by fire. Has the age of the internet matured to the point where a stunt like this seems fresh? I’m not sure, but my gut instinct is telling me this was wrong.
Vampire Weekend have always had a bit of an iconoclastic streak in their music. You would have to search for it though. But that is the point, isn’t it? Some music should be obtuse, and a band that has been labeled as only appealing to white, “over educated” males in their mid-twenties would probably fit that bill anyway. So is it any surprise that the cars they sing about and burnt represent the bourgeois culture they inhabit?
Billboard.com
Also, for the purposes of full disclosure, I must admit that I too, am white, “over educated,” and in my mid-twenties. Therefore, I like Vampire Weekend. I followed their rise from obscurity to Saturday Night Live musical guests. I even went out and purchased their music instead of pirating it.
So I’m torn. Burning classic cars like these Saabs seems wrong, but do we have to agree with artists all of the time? No, and I’ve seen worse excuses for art the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Have you also thought about the fact that these Saabs were penned by a designer looking to make a fashion statement? That means we have a case of art being burned for the sake of art. How’s that for post-modernism? I have a feeling that’s what the band was going for.
In any event, lead singer Ezra Koeing has expressed remorse for what the production company did. But what say you, commentariat? Did the band cross the line with this stunt?
It could put ideas in empty heads,music has always been about pissing someone off.Being an under educated woman in my mid 50s I don’t fit their audience
Heads that empty cant grasp an idea for long insert male into your sentence for me.
It’s 2013 you can’t write stuff like that anymore!
The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers. — Socrates 😛
Uhhhhhhh……..No thank you! 🙂
Meh.
Its not like 1000s of other identical models don’t exist. I don’t see how torching a vehicle that you can find on Craigs for $1500 in any metro in the US is destroying a classic. How many vehicles has Ken Block destroyed in making all of this Gymkhana videos and related promotional ventures.
This makes me think of the Calvin & Hobbes where he gets a metal album and throws away the vinyl and keeps the case in order to upset his parents.
No different than the 1000’s of cars destroyed in making movies (perhaps fewer now with GGI). And as someone who has driven a 2-stroke Saab and also both a 99 EMS and 1st year 99 Turbo (forgot to put those on my list) I think this 900 convertible was a low point in both design and what it said about the Saab brand.
Many a vehicle has been sacrificed for the movie industry. Why is this any different?
What has Steve Buscemi.. got to do with this story.
Just curious am a big fan of Boardwalk Empire..Not as good as the Sopranos(which I rate as the best TV show in history-and I’ll never change my mind about that one!!!! )
Is he (Steve Buscemi ) a SAAB fan, then???
A good actor, in any event…MOre boardwalk empires..please???? 🙂
It seems to all be part of a publicity stunt.
Band makes the video.
Buscemi poses for photo, which band circulates via Twitter, Instagram, etc.
Buscemi makes a different video for band shortly thereafter.
Meanwhile, the video of burning Swedes has 2.4+ million hits and counting. This is how viral marketing is done.
Who knew that burning a couple of used Saabs could be so brilliant? It was though, as I didn’t even know Vampire Weekend existed when the video came out and now they’re in full rotation on my favorite radio station. Would it have worked without the towing company that bought the cars mocking their former owners on facebook? Without Jalopnik having a couple of hand puppets that played their outraged roles so tearfully? I didn’t even know about the Buscemi angle before seeing this story, but I already knew far more about the demise of two used cars that could have just as easily been lost with thousands more in a flood than I know about Edward Snowden or why there are people that tolerate Obama canceling white house tours while spending 60 to 100 million on a family vacation.
You were doing pretty well there until you tossed the political jabs here in the end.
The music industry is in a world of hurt. These days, it’s necessary to become a YouTube/ social media sensation or get your song on a TV show in order to get heard. And since the internet is so crowded, it takes ever increasing levels of hype to stand out from the crowd.
This was a stunt, it wasn’t the first and it won’t be the last. The GOP could be in the White House, and the situation would be exactly the same with respect to viral media and the state of music video.
We’re being played. I don’t know whether Jalopnik get suckered in or whether Gawker is playing a deliberate role in the promotional effort, but in any case, we should always be wary of those who seek new ways to rile us up.
Gawker makes much of its income from “sponsored content”, so it’s safe to assume that may well have been the case.
It’s funny. You give me hope with the Miata article, only to take it away with this one…
Even if they aren’t sponsored, they benefit from being part of the hype machine. I should have put “suckered” in quotes, because Jalop is getting what they want, i.e. clicks.
Vampire Weekend sounds like a ripoff of the Strokes.
Also, the classic 900 convertible suffers from body rigidity on the level of a Flexible Flyer sled and massive cowl shake. I drove one several times that belonged to a friend and while the 16 valve 2.0 turbo four gave good acceleration, the car felt really unfinished.
I like Vampire Weekend, but I am a white, 29 year old attorney, so I guess I fit that market you mentioned.
That being said, even if the cars aren’t particularly nice, I’m just not a fan of destruction for destruction’s sake. If it had been for a stunt scene, okay, but just a burning car to send some sort of message just seems needless to me. Though I am the same guy who quit watching Richard Hammond’s Crash Course after an episode where he crushed several nice cars, including a 928, with a tank.
Being a Saab-ophile myself, I can only wish that the idiots that thought of this stunt die the same way those innocent Scaabs did.
P.S. I am an over-educated, teenage, white male (A.K.A. Vampire Weekend’s target audience). Also, I don’t even LIKE them!
They’ve been hammering this on Jalopnik for a while now. Their angle isn’t the annihilation of a few Saabs (though it still ticks some people off even though the diminution of remaining Saabs can only help collector value), it’s that the video producers bought the cars and told the old owners that they were going to good homes. I guess the belief is that Saab owners only sell their cars to good people who will take excellent care of them and that as ex-owners they have a say in what the present owners do to them.
They’re just Saabs. It’s not like they’re Ferraris or some limited edition supercar. People had the opportunity to buy as many of them as they wanted when they came out. In fact, if they had Saab would still be making cars. Hundreds of them go the scrap heap every year. What’s a few more?
What’s a Jalopnik?
Who? What? Who cares?
+1.
Only saabs when all said and done and untill the company imploded nobody wanted them anyway, meself I prefer firewood to keep warm but hey you cut you cloth to suit yer income I got outa school early. And its not like I’ll ever hear these idiots again anyway.
Wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t the background visual to this hipster tripe. Then again I don’t like Saabs all that much, am in my mid twenties and didn’t go to college.
What ticks me off (and the guys on Jalopnik, it appears) is they appear to have been very nice examples. They could have accomplished the same thing buying a couple of salvage yard refugees and giving them an Earl Schieb special.
And who the hell are they–no, really. Never heard of them, and didn’t even connect this band with the torched Saabs until I read this. Sorry, I lean more towards Phil Collins, Tom Petty, Billy Joel, Mary Chapin Carpenter and, of course, 1950s-60s rock and roll (I actually know who Junior Wells and Oscar Wills are!). Yes, unusual tastes for someone in their early 30s…
You’re not alone. I’m 25 and I really don’t care for most any music made after 1990. Almost reflects my taste in cars actually. Everyone tells me I was born 30 years too late, and I can’t say I disagree.
Ditto, although there are some post-1990 cars cars and groups I like .
Maybe they were Sandy flooded cars or something?
Self-consciously hip, erudite New York band burns used cars. Hipsters, car geeks, and hipster car geeks blog about it. Goes viral alongside Justin Beiber’s latest tattoo and pictures of cats.
A big ol’ meh all-around on this one.
There’s plenty of old Saabs clattering around to save for posterity. Yeah, there were some neat Saabs over the years, but they were mostly crap and failed in the marketplace as a result.
I’m a twenty-something white guy that listens to a lot of indie rock; Vampire Weekend certainly has musical talent, but their stuff leaves me cold. Too hipster. I prefer my bands to rock a little harder and/or provide more lyrical depth.
I don’t think that Radiohead has anything to worry about.
A “music” this crappy and primitive does not deserve a waste even of a semi-decomposed old Lada.
There’s been nothing worth listening to since metal got displaced by grunge. And everything that followed grunge is worse.
I’ll take Tawney Kitaen rolling on the hoods of two Jaguar XJ-6’s any day.
As to the youth? Not worth the back of my hand. Can’t even come up with a form of music to replace rock and roll. You realize, of course, that kids today listening to a varient of rock and roll is about a wonderful as the boomer generation passing on rock and roll so they could continue listening to their parent’s big bands.
I watched the video at the time; it struck me how un-creative their destruction turned out to be. Had I not known from the uproar that the cars in question were actually torched, I’d have suspected it was computer animated. In a word: it was lame.
Yet, even as someone who has felt like sparking up a Saab more than once in his lifetime, I do hate seeing wanton destruction of a clean and operable vehicle. But what’s done is done.
Great band, great music, great video.
Sorry, but the Saabs had it coming.
Very cool.
Watching the cars slow burn made me want one. Perhaps they could boost Fiat 500 sales doing this?
OMFG! As a LOYAL, DEDICATED, OWNER of a SAAB VEHICLE I am… completely nonplussed by these events. The percentage of outrage devoted to this incident by humanity as a whole should have been a negative figure. I could understand if it was something irreplaceable or rare and historically significant, but at the present moment in time, Saab 900s are not exactly the Rumplers from Metropolis. If it was even so much as a 99 Turbo I would be like “ugh”, but this doesn’t warrant that. If I was the person who sold these cars, I’d be sad that they met a fiery end, but also happy that they will live on in the form of a YouTube music video, transcending their automobilic bodies, entertaining many and provoking asinine debate amongst car nerds. The tow truck guy childishly taunting the previous owners on Facebook is in poor taste, but not something to get butt-hurt over.
Also, I liked the video and I like Vampire Weekend – casually, at least. I have 5-6 of their songs “starred” on Spotify and I’m familiar enough to know that their lyrics and videos frequently incorporate upper-middle-class, intellectual tropes like tennis, Cape Cod, academia, spoiled kids, designer clothes, etc. – frequently portrayed as 80s stereotypes. I get the impression that they are both making fun of, and celebrating these cultural relics, which Saabs could certainly be classified as… so maybe the video symbolically represents a shift away from their earlier themes, or maybe it’s a statement about cars being unfairly demonized by modern day upper-middle-class intellectuals (the album cover is a smoggy NYC skyline from above in the 60s, the video re-creates that effect with a smoldering Saab at ground level – this scenario is much less likely, but I want it to be true more).
I can’t say for sure, but it definitely isn’t some senseless bullshit without any artistic merit or an elaborate and well-orchestrated publicity stunt with Jalopnik in cahoots. If I was trying to run a viral marketing campaign, pissing off Saab fans would be an extremely low rung on the “potential controversy” ladder. The fact that it did spark some mild level of outrage was a happy byproduct of their original intent, as well as a sad commentary on dorks who’s “personal brand” is way too closely aligned with a dead auto manufacturer, and media/internet obsession with the “GONE TOO FAR?!” real life meme.
” If I was trying to run a viral marketing campaign, pissing off Saab fans would be an extremely low rung on the “potential controversy” ladder.”
It doesn’t really matter what the subject matter specifically is, just so long as people talk about it, spread the news, and it generates clicks.
I guess that the moral of the story is that Mr. Niedermeyer has reminded me that there are good reasons why I don’t spend much time reading Jalopnik. Much of the content seems to be written for people who aren’t old enough to drive, and a lot of it is just an exercise in bad faith.
The musics nothing special nor the video.There’s much better music coming out of America,Avenged Sevenfold,Black Veil Brides,5 finger Death Punch,Halestorm,Greenday,Paramore,The Gaslight Anthem Against Me & Less Than Jake have alll been on my playlist the last few days
Note to readers: Vampire Weekend originally wanted to trash (club to death like a baby harp seal) an OLD (1920-1940) Bugatti for the Diane Young music video according to Jalopnik.