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"FacebookPinterest\n\nVampire Weekend's second album, Contra, is the number one album in the country. Whodda thunk it?! But here's the bigger question: How did it happen, and does it matter? Is indie rock now going to start regularly drop-kicking Simon Cowell's acts from the top of the heap, or is this just another blip on the music industry's increasingly erratic radar? The guy that the New York Post recently called the Nikki Finke of the music industry\u2014his name is Bob Lefsetz\u2014says the band is \"just another hipster band that's caught fire with the...Brooklyn hipsters.\" Say it ain't so, Bob! Are there even 124,000 hipsters in Brooklyn with $9.99? Did anyone who watches Letterman buy Contra? We called up Kris Chen, V.P. of A&amp;amp;R at XL Recordings and the guy who watches over Vampire Weekend, and got another perspective. We asked Kris about signing the band, the making and marketing of Contra, and how the quartet of Columbia kids ended up knocking Ke$ha and Susan Boyle off the top of the charts.\n\nHow did you first hear about Vampire Weekend? \n\n I first saw their name on the Mercury Lounge's website in January 2007. I think they were opening for Born Ruffians, who I intended to see, but I had to go out of town. Afterwards I heard four or five songs on their MySpace page, and emailed the band's Gmail account. [Bassist] Chris Baio wrote me back two hours later and sent me a link to download every song they had recorded to date. Then we made plans to meet, and they chose the caf&amp;amp;#xC3;&amp;amp;#xA9; at the Angelika Theatre on Houston Street, which was funny.\n\nAnd by funny you mean awkward.\n\n Ha. One of their first questions was, \"What would you do with these songs?\" Meaning the songs that a lot of people mistakenly referred to as their demos. I said, \"Nothing. Just master them. That's your album.\" Maybe I'm imagining it, but I think they said I was the first person who told them that. They'd met with a couple other labels who'd thrown out ideas for big-name producers.\n\n XL co-owner Richard Russell was on Twitter two days ago saying how a lot of the label's bands have had producers in the bands: Jack White, Basement Jaxx, Friendly Fires.\n\n Yeah, and M.I.A. People like Diplo and Switch work with her, but at the end of the day, Maya really produces her own records.\n\n When we started the process of talking about Vampire Weekend's second album, I was pretty emphatic that I thought they should produce themselves again. But maybe hire an engineer this time to help push buttons.\n\n[\n\n](http://blog.gq.com/blogs/the-q/VW4.jpg)\n\nBy the time the first album came out the band had the indie buzz sewn up, and we were covering them in GQ, and I'd walk into work here in Times Square and there were giant posters of them staring at me from the windows of MTV... Why do you think they got such a broad range of support right away?\n\n When I was first meeting with the guys I said, \"What do you want to do first?\" They said, \"We want to tour the country.\" They decided that once Chris Baio graduated, the other three were going to quit their day jobs. They'd pool their money, buy a van, and get out there and do it. To me, that's as punk rock as it gets. Even if people might not look at them and think \"punk rock.\" I gave them contacts for a lot of venues across the country so they could book their own tour. I gave them an excel spreadsheet so they could keep a budget. They knew, instinctively, that the best thing to do was to get out and tour. You're not going to mean anything to people unless you can cut it live and build a fan base.\n\n As of this Wednesday, the first album had sold 498,000 copies. How'd that happen?\n\n We chipped away at it for two years\u2014almost to the day. We did 28,000 the first week and it has never dipped below a thousand a week. We kept it consistent, they went on the road immediately, and we had a lot of good press and radio and MTV, too. There wasn't one thing that you could pin it on.\n\nThere was no equivalent of M.I.A. getting \"Paper Planes\" on the Pineapple Express trailer.\n\n Right. There are people who read Pitchfork, and Vampire Weekend is the most mainstream record in their collection. And then there are my friend's nieces, who worship John Mayer. Vampire Weekend is the weirdest thing in their collection.\n\n For Contra, how did y'all end up with the January 12 release date?\n\n Originally, they wanted to get a record out in 2009. But I think they were rushing themselves unnecessarily. And really it just took a conversation with my boss, Richard Russell, who said, \"There's no need to rush it.\"\n\n When did the idea of a potential number one come into play?\n\n Maybe this sounds crazy, but when the record was mostly finished I said, \"I really think this record could go number one. I think this record could sell over 100,000 copies in its first week.\" We'd never had a number one in our office, so I think that was met with a lot of...\n\n \"Kris is feeling himself again...\"\n\n Right. But I kept saying it, and I said it to the band, and I said it to their manager, and I said it to people at the UK office. And I'm not trying to get on some Tony Robins seminar bullshit, but I'm a big believer that if you've got something like this, and you know it, you have to believe in it, and you have to convince other people that it's that important. And I don't think the band ever doubted that it was possible.\n\n It's interesting because the presumed indie stance on stuff like Billboard charts is, \"Fuck that shit, they don't mean anything, we don't care, it's about the music, man.\" But you were saying, \"Let's go get it.\"\n\n Yeah, I certainly understand that. And I suppose that maybe, at the end of the day, if saying that gets me kicked out of the indie club... I guess I'll leave. Maybe to some people it's not a big deal, or to some people \"ambition\" sounds really corny. But from the beginning, I really did think that this was a band a lot of people would like. And I think we all have a hand in shaping the face of popular culture. And I think that Vampire Weekend should be popular culture, and I will do everything I can to make a band like Vampire Weekend into what people in the middle of the country\u2014who only have access to CDs when they walk into Wal-Mart\u2014think of as a great band to listen to and tell their friends about. And you know what? If we don't have things like Vampire Weekend or Spoon\u2014who I hope do fucking amazing this week\u2014if we don't have things like that making dents in American culture, then all we're going to be left with is American Idol.\n\n[\n\n](http://blog.gq.com/blogs/the-q/VW3.jpg)\n\nSo once you settled on January 12, how closely were you watching what other releases went on the docket that day?\n\n I'd see different releases, and I would just shrug and say, \"You have to have confidence in your own record and not worry about, you know, Omarion.\"\n\nWho did 12k or something.\n\n I think he sold 19,000 records. And in terms of big records like Susan Boyle, I felt like those were going to be on the decline in the New Year, and they were.\n\n So with indie culture continually expanding and major label numbers falling, is Vampire Weekend an anomaly? Or are we going to see more indie bands on the charts?\n\n Well, Vampire Weekend and XL certainly owe a tremendous amount to labels like Sub Pop, who had the Shins at number two a couple of years ago; or to what Merge has done with Arcade Fire and Spoon the last few years; or what Matador did with the second Interpol record. I remember when the second Interpol record came out. It hit 65,000 in its first week, and we were all sitting back going, \"Fuck, that's incredible.\" Number one is such a time-and-place thing. We had a combination of great sales, Susan Boyle declining, and not a lot of competition. It's very situational. But that doesn't detract from it. And I think that every time there's a kick in the door from a band that has chosen to go the independent route, the door stays open a little bit wider.\n\n What does the financial bolster of 100,000-plus do for the label?\n\n It means you can spend more in terms of advertising and marketing and positioning. And it certainly helps maintain the health of a small company. But none of us are standing on tables\u2014\n\n **\n\n Lighting cigars with $20s?**\n\n I'll concede that I bought a case of champagne for the office and did a toast at five o'clock, but\u2014\n\n The jet's not revving its engines?\n\n The jet has not been built. If you want to talk about jets, those guys at Sony have private jets and the guys at Universal have private jets. And that's cool, they should. They're going to need them."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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