Modern Vampires of the City at 10: How Vampire Weekend spoke to the Gen Z Tumblr generation

By 2013, the “Indie Sleaze” scene that had propelled Vampire Weekend to the top was being washed away with the social media boom. Yet, in its place, their album that year, Modern Vampires of the City, also served as a launch pad for a new one: the Gen Z Tumblr generation. While the band still appealed to their original fan base, many Gen Z kids heading into their teenage years were discovering them as they were shaping their own Tumblr era aesthetic.

What bloghouse and Myspace were to millennials, a younger crowd leaned into a love for grunge vibes — reblogging pictures of leather jackets, fishnet leggings, and edits of emo quotes, typically by rising alt stars like Lorde and Sky Ferreira, and veterans Arctic Monkeys. (Two of whom also had black-and-white-themed albums that were released the same year.)

Read more: The Strokes albums ranked: From worst to best

And Vampire Weekend was changing, too. Initially formed on the grounds of Columbia University when all the members were in their early-20s, they were now cemented into adulthood and, with that, a different musical mindset. 

“There’s always something kind of haunting about the phrase ‘Modern Vampires of the City.’ And at first there was something that seemed kind of funny about calling a Vampire Weekend album Modern Vampires of the City, but then I do feel like there’s some deeper resonance there too,” lead singer Ezra Koenig told NPR about the album’s title and building blocks upon its release.

The aforementioned black-and-white cover art, featuring a Neal Boenzi photograph of their hometown of NYC covered in smog, reflected the direction that the band took on this album, which turns 10 on May 14. Unlike their indie-preppy influence on the 2008 self-titled record or the success that followed on 2010’s Contra, MVOTC was a reflection of grief in all forms. Vampire Weekend’s members, in a 2013 interview with The New York Times, said they viewed it as the final chapter in a musical trilogy. (They would go on to embrace collaborations and a carefree, jam-band style for their fourth a few years later.)

“I didn’t realize at first how many references there are to death and ticking clocks,” Koenig told the publication. “I guess that’s what makes an album unified, these little musical and lyrical tropes.”

“This record, it has a kind of a tension that’s always there, which I’m proud of, which is unique from the first two,” Rostam Batmanglij added. “Even if the songs are mostly in a major key, there’s something that’s hanging out there that’s a little bit dark. And I think that’s reflective of the world.”

Batmanglij also co-produced MVOTC with Ariel Rechtshaid, further signaling a change in Vampire Weekend’s direction, as he had tackled the sound of their first two albums solo. Rechtshaid had produced Ferreira’s Ghost EP the year prior, as well as working on her debut album and with Charli XCX — giving a sense of his darker, moodier pop collaborative background.

Yet, during the recording sessions, in a profile of the band from 2013 for Pitchfork, Rechtshaid revealed that they “had a running joke throughout the making of the record — they would reference their own songs and I’d give them a blank stare. They’d say, ‘You’re such an asshole, you’ve never even listened to our music.’”

“Whenever we came up with something familiar sounding, it was rejected,” said Rechtshaid to Electronic Musician (via NBHAP). And it worked, as the band went on to win a Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album.

One of the album’s lead singles, “Diane Young,” doubled as a play on words and an obvious representation of this. Sure, it kept the faster rockabilly-inspired instrumental, likely to not alienate the past listeners, but it also found them at their sharpest lyrically — including a playfully-dark nod to the infamous curse with “But you got the luck of a Kennedy.” 

There’s the loss of love on “Hannah Hunt,” a fictional tale but still titled after a woman that the band’s lead singer knew in a college class. However, the concept of grief crosses over most clearly on “Hudson,” whose opening lines set the story of the famous explorer, and “Step,” which doesn’t have a notable lore, save for a ​​Souls of Mischief reference, but is still utterly devastating.

“I had this little poem I’d written once, imagining Henry Hudson when he was first exploring over here,” Koenig said to NME. “There was something that always struck me as dark and funny that Hudson Bay, which obviously was named after him, was the place that he was set adrift by his mutinous crew and left to die.”

Many Gen Z kids would’ve been in their early adolescence when Vampire Weekend debuted, and nearing the age the band was at the start of their career by the time MVOTC came out, as they entered teenhood. Inherently experiencing a coming of age, the concept of losing others from general breakups, addiction, and various aspects of death has become a clearer reality. “Everyone’s dying, but girl, you’re not old yet,” Koenig sings as one of the closing lines of “Step.” 

And, with that, perhaps the Gen Z love for this album (and many other beloved records during this era that leaned into nihilistic and hedonistic themes) doubled as the start of an awareness for what was to come. It’s the teenage years and the presumed loss of innocence just before barrelling into adulthood. Granted, Vampire Weekend’s members were grappling with entering a different stage of life, but the concept of grieving past selves and what once was still remains. 

In the years since MVOTC’s release, even after founding member Batmanglij departed the band in 2016, they’ve still proven that out of the darkness comes a sunnier, cheerful return, as present on 2019’s Father of the Bride. Bonus points if Haim is there too.