No Hope

Album: The Vaccines Come Of Age (2012)
Charted: 37
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Songfacts®:

  • This is the first single to be released from The Vaccines' second album, The Vaccines Come Of Age. Frontman Justin Young said: "We all felt it was a really good bridge between the first record and the second record." The song received its first play on Zane Lowe's BBC 1 Radio show on May 28, 2012.
  • Young said of the upbeat track to NME: "This is our coming of age song. It's about growing up and getting old."
  • The angsty tune was inspired by struggles Young has experienced in his twenties. He explained to The Sun: "People always told me that my teens would be the most confusing, difficult transitionary period of my life. But I was so idiotic and reckless in my teens that I didn't find them hard at all. I was just kissing girls and smoking weed. Now I've become more highly strung and found my twenties a lot harder.

    Meeting people for the first time and knowing they're deciding whether or not you're good-looking, talented, charismatic or not. It's a head f--k. People are at different steps on the same path when before we were all neck and neck. It's just confusing and scary."
  • Young told NME: "I wrote it in our rehearsal space when I was waiting for the others to come in: the melody was written within half an hour: It wears is heart on its sleeve and I think that's really important - if you want people to emotionally invest in what you do then you have to be uncomfortably honest."
  • The single version's B-side "Blow Your Mind" was written and sung by bass player Arni Hjorvar. It ties in with the single's artwork, which depicts a young girl resembling him.
  • Young explained the album title to NME: "I quite liked that the first record was quite disarming and didn't take itself too seriously, so I liked the idea of doing something similar on this album. The title isn't actually a reference to the band... it's a reference to being a human being. We used a lyric from the first single, like we did on the first album. I love the idea of continuity."

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