Arcade Fire Reveal Eight 'Suburbs' Covers

Arcade Fire's new album The Suburbs is just weeks from hitting stores and the band is planning an epic blitz for its August 3rd release. Yesterday, the Canadian collective announced they will release the album with eight different covers, each portraying a slightly different perspective on a typical suburban scene. All eight covers feature a car in front of houses, trees and wooden fences, with Arcade Fire logo in the upper right corner. In an interview with Billboard, Mac McCaughan, cofounder of Arcade Fire's label Merge, said the band was in complete control when it came to decisions surrounding the album's release. "[They have] attention to detail and focus on their art," he said. "It's 'We want this the way we want it to be. We're not going to go halfway and then just let someone else decide how it's going to be put out into the world.' "

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As Rolling Stone previously reported, Arcade Fire have released four early tracks online and the band has begun road testing the material, premiering seven new songs at a Quebec gig last month. In related news, Arcade Fire announced this week that they would match fan donations to Kanpe, a foundation that benefits victims of the Haiti earthquake. The band pledges to donate up to $1 million dollars.

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Song Stories

“Baby Got Back”

Sir Mix-a-Lot | 1992

While watching a Budweiser commercial during the Super Bowl, Sir Mix-a-Lot thought the skinny female models in the ad didn’t represent reality. So he wrote this ode to ample bottoms, featuring its famous to-the-point lyric: “I like big butts and I cannot lie.” MTV banished the video, featuring shaking booties and sexually suggestive fruit, to 9 p.m. or later. “I thought my career was over,” he told Rolling Stone. “Then I called Rick Rubin, and I told him the video was banned, and he was like, 'Great!' We sold another 2 million records.”

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