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Video: Vampire Weekend and Black Keys Fight It Out on 'Colbert Report'

Grammy-nominated bands are challenged to a 'sell-out-off'

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January 12, 2011 10:25 AM ET

The Black Keys and Vampire Weekend frontman Ezra Koenig stopped by The Colbert Report last night to help Stephen Colbert fill out his Grammy ballot: Since both bands are up for Best Alternative Music Album, he challenged them to a "sell-out-off" in which the musicians showed off the high-profile television ads that featured their songs in 2010.

But after Colbert determined that both bands "equally whored out" their music, things got a bit violent. Check it out.

The Colbert Report: January 11 [Colbert Nation]

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“1999”

Prince | 1982

“I don’t consider myself a great poet,” Prince told Rolling Stone. “I just know I’m here to say what’s on my mind.” In the case of the apocalyptic party anthem “1999,” he was worried about then-president Ronald Reagan’s foreign policies. The song’s melody is based on a riff borrowed from the Mamas and Papas’ “Monday, Monday,” and Prince originally envisioned the first verse with three-part harmony but later split the vocals between himself and members of the Revolution. Because Warner Bros., with whom Prince was locked in a contractual battle, owned the original’s masters, Prince rerecorded the song and appropriately released that version in 1999.

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