Let’s start off 2023 with the incomparable Karen O and the Yeah Yeah Yeah‘s for our first 2023 My Top 10 list.

I discovered Yeah Yeah Yeah’s in 2004. I was living in a small apartment in North Orange County with my then husband and two daughters. We’d returned to California from the Midwest the year prior, and I was diving back into finding and listening to and writing about new music. It was “Maps” that hit me first – the song that I think got everyone’s attention at the time. In 2009, I’d see them play live at Coachella. Later that year I’d fall into a friends to lovers situation that Karen O’s voice was a big part of – at least a big part of the soundtrack. Their music would help salve my heart when said tryst fell apart, and would accompany many other adventures of the love, life, and lust variety – as well as many a playlist.

Yeah Yeah Yeah’s

Yeah Yeah Yeah’s
My Top 10

Song 1. “Zero” from the album, It’s Blitz! (2009)

“Shake it like a ladder to the sun.
Makes me feel like a madman on the run.
Find me never never far gone.
So get your leather, leather,
leather on on on on.”

Song 2. “Maps” from the album, Fever To Tell (2003)

“Wait,
they don’t love you,
like I love you.”

Song 3. “Mystery Girl” from the album, Self-Titled (2002)

“The girl hit hot like a barracuda baby.
She floated on air like a crest of wave.
She was a primal institution.
She was a danger to herself,
yeah.”

Song 4. “Black Tongue” from the album, Fever To Tell (EX)/Show Your Bones (2009)

“Boy you just a stupid bitch,
and girl you just a no good dick…

Hot.”

Song 5. “Soft Shock” (Acoustic Version) from the album, It’s Blitz! (Deluxe Edition) (2009)

“Louder,
lips speak louder.
Better,
back together.”

Yeah Yeah Yeah’s

Song 6. “Gold Lion” from the album, Show Your Bones (2006)

“Now,
tell me what you saw.
Tell me what you saw.
There was a crowd of seeds.
Inside,
outside.
I must have done a dozen each.
It was the height I threw,
the weight.
The shell was crushing you.
I’ve been around a few.”

Song 7. “Y Control from the album, Fever To Tell (2003)

“I wish I could buy back,
the woman you stole.”

Song 8. “Skeletons” from the album, It’s Blitz! (2009)

“Love,
my name.
Love,
left dry.
Frost or flame?
Skeleton me.”

Song 9. “Burning” from the album, Cool It Down (2022)

“Well, I’ll release her.
From the bindings of her teachers.
What they’re hiding there is broke, broke, broke.
Like the River Styx,
I flow, flow, flow.”

Song 10. “Phenomena” from the album, Show Your Bones (2006)

“You’re something like a phenomena.
Something like an astronomer.
Roll kid,
rock your body off.”