Spotlight On: KAREN O

ABOUT THIS WEEK’S SHERO IN THE SPOTLIGHT:

Karen Orzolek was born in 1978 in South Korea to a Korean mother and a Polish-American father. Their family moved to the States just before Karen turned two, and she grew up in New Jersey with an early love of singing and a passion for music. Twenty miles away and twenty years later, in the city that she went to as a teenager to see as many live shows as she could, Karen O co-founded a band of her own as vocalist, frontwoman and songwriter, and launched a career that would quickly make her into the indie rock icon she is today. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs was formed in 2000 in New York City with guitarist Nick Zinner, and then, when they needed a drummer, Karen recruited a friend from Oberlin College, drummer Brian Chase. Their self-titled debut EP came out in 2001, and their full length debut Fever To Tell arrived in 2003 to critical acclaim, was nominated for a GRAMMY, and has become widely regarded as one of the best of the decade, if not of all time. Show Your Bones followed in 2006, was also GRAMMY nominated, and in 2009, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs continued their streak with their third GRAMMY-nominated and Gold-certified album It’s Blitz! which also topped every year-end best-of list that year. That same year, Karen O wrote her first motion picture soundtrack for Where The Wild Things Are, receiving a GRAMMY nomination for the song “All Is Love.” In 2013, the fourth Yeah Yeah Yeahs album Mosquito was released, and “The Moon Song” written for the Spike Jonze film Her, gave Karen her first Oscar nomination for Best Original Song. Later that year, Karen released her solo debut, Crush Songs. And in 2015, she had another milestone first, giving birth to her son. Since then, along with a deluxe reissue of Fever To Tell in 2017, Karen O put out the critically hailed album Lux Prima, a collaboration with Danger Mouse which also earned a GRAMMY nod. And now, at long last, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs are back with their highly anticipated fifth full length album, Cool It Down, as Fever To Tell nears its 20th anniversary in April of 2023. It is a thrill to welcome Karen O as this week’s SHERO In The Spotlight.

Our playlist includes new music from Plains, Stevie Nicks, Courtney Marie Andrews, and Tegan And Sara.

SHERO BIRTHDAYS: We celebrate SHERO birthdays of Patrice Rushen on 9/30, and both Brittany Howard and Gillian Welch on 10/2.

This week’s Radio SHERO: Ayisha Jaffer from The Current in Minneapolis/St. Paul joins us this week, spinning the track “Say It Now” by Hannah Jadagu.

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Spotlight On: SHEMEKIA COPELAND

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Spotlight On: AMY RAY