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“Tonight” feels both unexpected and utterly fated. The new single from Phoenix’s forthcoming album Alpha Zulu marks the first time the French quartet has ever officially featured another singer on one of their songs, but frontman Thomas Mars and Vampire Weekend leader Ezra Koenig sound as if they’ve been trading cryptically charming lyrics for years. Meanwhile, the track’s trebly guitars and new-wave sheen will instantly bring many millennials of a certain age back to the halcyon days of 2010, when these bands were making young indie fans momentarily forget about their recession-plagued futures as they charged up the charts. It’s the rare collaboration that works better in practice than it does in theory—nostalgic but not lazy, as inviting as your favorite sweater.
The two first met on the festival circuit during those early Obama years and have since become friends. (Mars’ wife, Sofia Coppola, also directed Koenig’s wife, Rashida Jones, in the 2020 comedy On the Rocks.) They worked on “Tonight” remotely, trading ideas and files back and forth. So it’s fitting that, on our three-way video call, Mars is waking up at home in downtown Manhattan, while Koenig is getting ready for dinner 13 hours ahead in Japan, where Jones is filming an upcoming TV show. Mars, 45, is still rocking that disheveled bedhead, each strand of hair perfectly out-of-place; Koenig, 38, still looks like he’s never needed to shave a day in his life. Their mutual respect is palpable, even a bit heartwarming.
Thomas Mars: I saw the “A-Punk” music video on TV in the late 2000s. Back then, the members of Phoenix had a small apartment in Paris together, and the TV was on 20 hours a day. We were like vampires, living at night, waking up at 5 p.m. and going to sleep at 11 a.m. every day, going back and forth to the studio. So I saw that video at eight in the morning, with breakfast. It’s rare that there’s something where you feel a connection immediately, but I remember thinking that it was instantly good.
Ezra Koenig: Probably the first Phoenix song I heard was “If I Ever Feel Better” [from 2000’s United], but if I fast forward ahead, thinking about that early era of Vampire Weekend, another song that comes to mind is “Consolation Prizes.” I already thought Phoenix was cool, but there’s something about that song where I had this feeling that, even though our music was different, in some ways there was a kinship, because it just sounded like guys making a rock song, but from a different perspective. Because there’s a type of “real rock band” that I respect, but I don’t necessarily relate to. That song struck me as sophisticated and cerebral, but cool. It gave me a lot of feelings and thoughts about how a band—and rock music—could be.
Koenig: An early time when I met Thomas, he was talking about how good the second Kings of Leon album was, and I knew nothing about it. He was like, “You’ve got to check this out.” I was so interested in what kind of rock music he liked, so I listened to that and really tried to draw the connections.
Mars and Koenig: [decisively] No, no. [both laugh]
Koenig: It was one that had the song that went, [sings] “Eighteen, balding, star.” What’s that album called?
Mars: It’s called Aha Shake Heartbreak.
Mars: We have a whiteboard in the studio, and sometimes we put names to each part of a song. And because a song is so fragile and vulnerable when we start working on it, these little names are really important. For example, if there’s a part that I name after [the Italian singer-songwriter Lucio] Battisti—“Oh, it’s the Battisti bridge”—I’m unconsciously convincing the other band members to love that part and keep it in the song.
So at some point I wrote on the whiteboard, like, “That’s the ‘Ezra’ part.” I was hearing his voice on the second verse. You get bored of your own voice, and this song was calling for a question-and-answer dynamic. We were friends already, so I just asked him.
Koenig: I was surprised, like, “Really? All right! Cool.” I would’ve been down for anything with Phoenix, but I also really liked the song.
Mars: Yeah, that’s true. The reason why it was called the “Ezra” part in the first place was because I was hearing what he already sang. And while making the song, there was another part where the build up to the chorus had a little tickling of EDM in a very strange way, which was interesting to us, but we couldn’t quite get there. I felt like there was another way to do it, which was more like “Armistice,” from Wolfgang, which is what we did. In the end, that emulation and those references make it sweeter—that it’s these things put together.
Koenig: I maybe suggested a word change or two, but I was singing what Thomas wrote, which is cool because I’ve never actually done that before. It was fun to just be the vocalist for once.
Mars: Lyrically, I embrace flaws and translations that are awkward, so I was a little worried to bring Ezra into my weird, cryptic world. I wanted him to have outs; I really didn’t want to force him. I felt like some of my texts could almost be like an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, like, [tentatively] “Are you sure you really want to do this?”
Koenig: As you talk about your cryptic world, there have been times when people have spoken about my lyrics in the same way. Even though English is my first language, we still sometimes come to a similar place. I don’t think Thomas gets enough credit as a lyricist, especially since English is his second language. He finds cool, unusual words, and there’s such a playfulness to it. It’s a step beyond merely coming up with coherent ideas—it’s playing with sound and rhythm, and finding that weird poetic thing. I can’t imagine trying to do that in another language myself.
With any art form—lyrics, production, playing the guitar, whatever—there is that hard-to-put-your-finger-on thing called style. It’s something slightly greater than the sum of its parts. And to be able to write in a second language with style blows my mind. It’s hard enough to have style in the language that you speak at home.
Mars: [laughs] I’m sorry for that question, that you have to explain someone else’s song.
Koenig: Well, what’s cool about the song is that it’s a mix of cryptic lines and some very classic, straightforward ones like, “Could you come tonight?” It sounds like a bit of a relationship song, whether it’s at an inflection point, breaking down—“I take all the blame”—but then it seems to be coming out the other end: “Let’s roll.”
And I also like all the references to dinner: “Who let the boys spill their entree?” and, “Dinner is served, can’t you see we’re not opposites.” Maybe it even just took place over the course of one evening, where people were pissed off with each other and were like, “I don’t even want to go have dinner anymore.” But then they do, and they’re like, “Aren’t you glad we didn’t cancel dinner?” Just throwing that out there.
Mars: Italians are so good at bringing food into the lyrics, and I think I was trying to copy that. Battisti has a great song called “Il Salame,” about salami. It also involves a strange sexual awakening: He’s a young kid in his room, and there’s a girl he likes, and they don’t really do anything. But then, to take the pressure off, he leaves and goes to the kitchen and opens the fridge and sees a piece of salami. That’s the moment that’s highlighted in the song: When the salami comes in front of his eyes, that’s exactly what he needs. So when we heard Italians like Battisti and listened to their lyrics, it opened up a new world of possibilities.
Mars: I’d love to. We’re thinking of different ways to make it work so that it’s not like a remote performance; during the pandemic, I wasn’t too much of a fan of everything that was put out there. But we’re about to start a tour, and we’re playing that song, and it’s going to feel lonely onstage.
Koenig: Are you going to sing the second verse or just do a moment of silence? [laughs]
Mars: We’ve been rehearsing it with me singing the second verse. Or I could invite someone from the crowd: “Hey, you want to sing the Ezra part?” My algorithm is feeding me all these videos of people inviting fans on stage. It seems like there’s this craving for those kinds of wholesome moments, which I’m going against. It makes me really annoyed that you put all this time and energy into doing something, and then someone else wants to sing your part, and it instantly feels like you’re watching The Voice. It’s fun to interact, but it’s also turning into a big TV experience, and I don’t think that’s what watching a band you like should be.
Koenig: We’ve had some fun experiences with bringing fans up, but it can be very chaotic, because once somebody actually gets on stage, it’s so bewildering—it’s so loud, the crowd is looking at you. If you’re not used to it, even people who really know how to play something get nervous, and it’s all sloppy. When I think of the sloppy chaos of that moment, it doesn’t seem very Phoenix-y to me.
