Chatting to Justin Young of UK band The Vaccines, Stephen 'Steps' Lowe on Today Radio's The LunchBox explores the band’s early days, enjoying success and not overthinking things.
'Pick-Up Full of Pink Carnations' is the new album from The Vaccines and one of the year's most anticipated.
The pre-launch anxiety is always a feature of the process, Justin explains.
“I used to be of the philosophy that if something wasn't difficult it probably wasn't of great enough value. But now I am the complete opposite and I think that the easiest stuff is the best stuff.”
“There is a reason why artists' first records are so often lauded as their best. There is this naivety and 'first idea, best idea' kind of philosophy where they don't overthink themselves too much and are not weighed down by external pressure.”
“It was really on the fourth album when I really stopped giving a s**t what other people outside the band thought."
“It was really on the fourth album when I really stopped giving a s**t what other people outside the band thought. While we didn’t go on to be the next Coldplay or U2, we have been lucky enough to carve a career out and I believe that we are worthy enough to have done that. I found a way to enjoy it in a way that I wasn’t really able to on the first record.”
As for the early days, Justin explains that it is a very exciting, strange place to be in your early 20s, when success finally and suddenly comes knocking at your door almost overnight, despite years of producing demos.
And how are things going in the age of post-COVID, as an indie English rock band with a name like The Vaccines? Justin reveals that there are, indeed, a few hiccups with SEO, "When we do post things on Instagram, it always comes up with a warning label."
As for settling on the name of the album, 'Pick-Up Full of Pink Carnations': "I thought it sounded great, I didn't know what it meant ... it's a mouthful, I like it," Justin recalls.
"Dreams ... if they do come true, never really [feel] how you would imagine them to, and I think dreams are pretty much always misremembered."
However, he had an inkling that something was amiss, could it be plagiarism? Google brought few answers, before something clicked: "It was a misremembered lyric from Don McLean's 'American Pie' ... and I thought that that was kind of poetic — that the lyric had made its way into the song 'The Dreamer'. Which is kind of about, dreams, kind of, if they do come true, never really feeling how you would imagine them to, and I think dreams are pretty much always misremembered."
Justin applies this feeling to living in the U.S., "having always dreamed of living in the U.S. ... being fed on a diet of American pop culture growing up, trying to figure out if I was running to something or from something, whilst making this record."
The title of the album came to him, falling "out of the sky in quite a meaningless way and then ended up encapsulating everything I was feeling and trying to say for the record."
So what does this album say about who The Vaccines are now, as a band? How did Justin come to be such a nostalgic person, and does the band have a secret 12-minute prog-rock opus lurking on a hard drive somewhere? Listen to the first and second half of singer/guitarist and chief Vaccines spokesperson Justin Young's interview with Stephen 'Steps' Lowe on The Lunchbox to find out, through RTL Play or the players below:
