Wiki
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Length
4:12
“Obvious Bicycle” depicts the life of a man who has lost hope in life while growing, believing he is so small in a vast world, and that he has no importance.
One could see this song as the bookend to a song from their self-titled album, “One (Blake’s Got A New Face),” which was apparently about an acquaintance then at Stanford. On the Vampire Weekend Reddit AMA, Ezra Koenig described the “Obvious Bicycle” narrator as a grown-up/wizened version of the narrators of earlier Vampire Weekend songs:
"M79 –> White Sky / Cape Kod Kwassa Kwassa –> Finger Back / The Kids Don’t Stand a Chance –> Obvious Bicycle"
This song samples the drums from “Keep Cool Babylon” by Ras Michael & the Sons of Negus. To NME, Rostam Batmanglij described the evolution of the sound:
“It started with really hectic drums, like Aphex Twin, but we got rid of them, and it’s inspired by the Dollar Brand record ‘Good News from Africa.’”
Vampire Weekend premiered this song along with “Everlasting Arms” on April 30, 2013 during a live gig in New York.
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