Vampire Weekend's New Album Named After Nintendo Game

Posted on Nov 11th 2009 10:00AM by John D. Luerssen
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Sorry, political junkies. It turns out Vampire Weekend's hotly-anticipated new album 'Contra' is not a statement about 1980's Nicaraguan rebel factions. In reality, the New York band's sophomore album -- due Jan. 12 -- was named after the Konami video game that first debuted back in 1987.

"Look, I was born in 1984, so I'm not going to name an album 'Contra' and not think about that video game," the band's frontman Ezra Koenig told MTV News before professing his childhood affinity for 'Contra III' for Super Nintendo. "There's not an explicit connection ... I did have a moment where I stopped and thought, 'Wow, everybody my age, when you say 'Contra', thinks of the video game, and everybody my parents' age thinks of the counter-revolutionaries in Nicaragua. It couldn't be two more different things."

Koenig did admit that the title speaks to conflict in general. "I do think it's related to our identity as a band," he said. "When you're in a situation where you all of a sudden get people writing about you and saying things about you, of course, you're going to have a lot of people who try to identify you by a series of bulls--- signifiers. They'll try to say because you wear this kind of shirt, you come from this kind of family or because you have a song with this word in it you must be of this political persuasion."

"So we did a lot of thinking about the idea of opposition, and how people try to place you in categories, and how we all do it -- it's not just in terms of critics versus bands, or politicians, we do it in our personal life," Koenig continued. "It's easy to get into that mindset, and I think a lot of things in our lives are trying to make us chose between these really basic things, when ultimately it's not a good way to look at the world."

So, wait -- how does that relate to a game that features a memorable cheat code and blowing up alien soldiers?