Saturday, November 22, 2008

Peter Bjorn And John - Young Folks (Featuring Victoria Bergsman)

"Young Folks" is the first single from Peter Bjorn and John's third album, Writer's Block (released in 2006). The single features Victoria Bergsman of The Concretes as a guest vocalist. The chorus is based on the song, "Rich Folks Hoax" by Rodriguez.

The song first attracted notice on websites such as MySpace and YouTube, and was used in a number of commercials and television shows. Only since mid-2007 has the song earned extensive airplay on American radio, most notably on dance radio outlets like KNHC / Seattle, KNGY / San Francisco and Sirius Satellite's "The Beat".

The song was ranked #5 on Pitchfork Media's "Top 100 Tracks of 2006" list. Pitchfork reviewed the song on 19 July 2006, giving it three out of five stars. The song was also voted #2 in the 2006 NME Track of the Year poll. Planet Sound named this their #2 single of 2006. The song was named the number one song of 2007 according to the iTunes Music Store. Y-Rock On XPN also named the song #1 of 2007.

On Peter Bjorn and John's recent Australian tour, Victoria Bergsman's vocals were performed by Tracyanne Campbell of Camera Obscura. The group performed the song on Late Night with Conan O'Brien on 29 January 2007, and on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on 18 May 2007 (the latter with Tonight Show band member Vicki Randle on bongos). On 29 September 2007, the band played "Young Folks", with Victoria Bergsman's vocals, on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross on BBC1.

The single was re-released on 17 September 2007, when it reached number 13 in the UK, beating the original chart position of number 33 in 2006.

The accompanying video was directed by Ted Malmros with animation by Graham Samuels.

The song is featured on the 2007 compilation album, Acoustic 07, the FIFA 08 soundtrack, and was also used in the E3 trailer of Lips, the video game. Gossip Girl also uses this track for its theme.

Peter Bjorn And John - Young Folks (Featuring Victoria Bergsman)

1 comment:

  1. Are you the brother of BJORN the one who makes trip hop music i love her music though.

    ReplyDelete