Maps
by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
- 117
- BPM
- G major
- Key
- 9B
- Camelot
- 53
- Danceability
- 1
- Acousticness
When "Maps" came out in the UK in September 2003, Yeah Yeah Yeahs worried about its fate in the United States, and Interscope held distribution there until February 10, 2004. Sales of Fever to Tell rose from 124,000 units shipped in its release year to a million by the end of the decade. In the US the single reached number 87 on the Hot 100 and number nine on the Modern Rock Tracks chart.
The song began when Nick Zinner played a riff on a whim in the band's shared home. Karen O heard it as she walked past his door, sang along, and wrote the song in 20 minutes. Her lyrics came from a turbulent stretch with her boyfriend then, Angus Andrew of Liars, and the repeated line "They don't love you like I love you" was adapted from an email she had sent him. The final version was recorded at Headgear Studio in Brooklyn and co-produced with David Andrew Sitek.
Patrick Daughters directed the video in a high school gymnasium. Andrew was meant to appear but arrived three hours late. Karen O was in tears just before she left for tour. The crying seen in the video was not staged.
Maps runs at 117 BPM, the tempo of pop, funk and disco-leaning dance. In classical terms it sits in moderato territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 2.05 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 513 ms. It is in G major, Camelot 9B, which shares its notes with E minor and mixes cleanly with C major and D major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.