“Capricorn” by Vampire Weekend

"Capricorn" arrived in 2024 as the first taste of Only God Was Above Us, Vampire Weekend's fifth album, paired on a double A-side with "Gen-X Cops" and marking the band's first new single since 2019. Ezra Koenig wrote it alone and produced it with Ariel Rechtshaid: Koenig sings and plays piano plus acoustic and electric guitar, Rechtshaid adds guitar, harmonica and synth, both he and Baio handle bass, J-Zone sits behind the kit, and Dave Fridmann mixed it.

The song is about getting older and learning that the grown-ups never had any more control than the kids did, a gentle kind of dread rather than a panic. For the video, the band's longtime creative director Nick Harwood cut together Steven Siegel's footage of New York in the late 1980s before the band finally turns up to play; Siegel's photography also gave the album its title.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.