When you’re Karen O, I suppose it’s to be expected that becoming a solo artist separate from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs is merely par for the fame course. It’s also expected that your media campaign to promote said album would be utterly contingent on promotion through Pitchfork and Urban Outfitters. It all smacks of unabashed contrivance.
The album, Crush Songs, has an undeniably emo feel–though not emo in the mid-era Dashboard Confessional sense, but more in the classicist Smiths sense. The latest song to be heard from the record, “Day Go By,” features languid, morose vocals that mourn, “I really need my fix ’cause you got me so sick.” Dubbing Crush Songs “the soundtrack to an ever continuing love crusade,” Karen O has proven herself something of a marketing genius, knowing just who to target in order to sell her music.
