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Left to Right: Brent DeBoer, Courtney Taylor-Taylor, Peter Holmstrom and Zia McCabe
'Cause I like you,
Yeah, I like you,
And I'm feelin' so bohemian like you,
Yeah, I like you,
Yeah, I like you,
And I feel, whoa whoo!
"Bohemian Like You"

The Dandy Warhols are a four-piece band hailing from Portland, Oregon. Formed in 1994, the band consists of Courtney Taylor-Taylor, Peter Holmstrom, Zia McCabe and Brent DeBoer. They've run the gamut from psychedelic rock to power pop, with the occasional rockabilly tune thrown in.

They are one of the two featured bands in the documentary Dig!, which examines the band's love/hate relationship with The Brian Jonestown Massacre. The film depicts the Dandy Warhols as the stable, happy and successful shadow of the mad artists in BJM. Taylor-Taylor provides the narration. A 20th anniversary extended release of the movie, named Dig! XX, premiered in January 2024 at the Sundance Film Festival.


The band currently consists of (founding members in bold):

  • Courtney Taylor-Taylor - lead vocals and guitar (1994-present)
  • Peter Holmstrom - guitar (1994-present)
  • Zia McCabe - keyboards and bass (1994-present)
  • Brent DeBoer - drums and backing vocals (1998-present)

Former members:

  • Eric Hedford - drums and backing vocals (1994-1998)

Discography:

  • Dandys Rule, OK? (1995)
  • ...The Dandy Warhols Come Down (1997)
  • Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia (2000)
  • Welcome To The Monkey House (2003)
  • The Black Album / Come On Feel The Dandy Warhols (2004) note 
  • Odditorium or Warlords Of Mars (2005)
  • Earth To The Dandy Warhols (2008)
  • The Dandy Warhols Are Sound (2009)note 
  • This Machine (2012)
  • Distortland (2016)
  • Why You So Crazy (2019)
  • Tafelmuzik Means More When You're Alone (2020)
  • It’s a Fast Driving Friday With the Dandy Warhols Thirty Seconds (2020)note 
  • Rockmaker (2024)

Trope Namer for:

Tropes associated with the Dandy Warhols:

  • Broken Record: "I Love You" starts by repeating, well... "I love you" throughout the first half of the song.
  • Cover Version: They've done covers as diverse as "Kiss Off", "Sister Golden Hair", "All I Have To Do Is Dream" and "Hell's Bells".
  • Department of Redundancy Department: "Colder Than the Coldest Winter Was Cold"
  • Diss Track: "Not If You Were the Last Junkie on Earth" is generally regarded as a passive-aggressive slam at Anton Newcombe, who was addicted to heroin. Taylor-Taylor is recorded playing the track for Newcombe himself in Dig! and states in the narration that he was disappointed by Newcombe's complete lack of reaction. Newcombe would later record an Answer Song, "Not If You Were the Last Dandy on Earth."
  • Either/Or Title: Odditorium or Warlords Of Mars
  • Epic Rocking: "It's A Fast Driving Rave-Up With The Dandy Warhols Sixteen Minutes." The clue is in the title. Other epic rockers of note include "Genius" (6:08), "Dick" (8:07), "The Creep-Out" (8:59), "Be In" (7:00), "You Come In Burned" (7:22), "Love Is The New Feel Awful" (9:36), "A Loan Tonight" (11:49), "Valerie Yum" (7:01), and "Musee d'nougat" (14:46).
    • Every song on Tafelmuzik Means More When You're Alone, with the shortest track being "The After Bath" at 7:25 and the longest being "It's the End of the World as We Know It and I Feel Bored" at 36:43.
  • Fading into the Next Song:
    • Dandy Rule, OK?: The outro of "Ride" leads into the fade-in for "Best Friend".
    • ...The Dandy Warhols Come Down: The opening tracks "Be In" and "Boys Better".
    • Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia has most of its tracks seamlessly blending into each other.
  • Follow the Bouncing Ball: Part of the official video for "Bohemian Like You" satirizes karaoke music videos; in fact, it starts off with the standard opening karaoke credits and lead-in, and the lyrics are shown on-screen in karaoke fashion.
  • Full-Frontal Assault: In their earlier years they've performed live shows in various stages of undress (even Zia's gotten topless on occasion).
  • Garage Rock: Part of the genre's revival in the late 90s/early 2000s, and notably one of the few bands to break out right before the Turn of the Millennium garage rock revival popularized by The Strokes.
  • Gratuitous French: An alternate version of "Welcome To The Third World" was recorded en français.
  • Inaction Video: "Good Morning" and "Plan A" (the latter features Color-Coded Characters).
  • Limited Lyrics Song: "Nietzsche" consists of a single repeated verse:
    I want a god who stays dead, not plays dead
    I, even I, can play dead
  • Long-Runner Line-up: The band's line-up have remained the same after drummer Brent DeBoer replaced Eric Hedford in 1998.
  • Minimalistic Cover Art: Their first album. Centered logo on white background, Dandys Rule, OK? in small type under it. And that's all.
  • Ms. Fanservice: Zia. She's bared her breasts on stage and participated in a nude photoshoot for Suicide Girls while heavily pregnant. Having become a mother in 2001, those days may be behind her.
  • Non-Appearing Title: "Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth", which many people call the "Heroin is so passe" song.
    • Also "Plan A", "Hard On For Jesus" and "Love Is The New Feel Awful".
    • "All The Money Or The Simple Life Honey" almost averts the trope with the chorus "I can tell you, for the money, the simple life, honey, is good".
      • Also with "Horse Pills" (the lyrics mention "horse-sized pills").
  • Obsession Song: "I Love You"
  • Psychedelic Rock: A genre of their music.
  • Punny Name: Well, yeah.
  • Re-Cut:
    • Russell Elavedo originally mixed the 2003 album Welcome To The Monkey House, but Capitol Records had it given a glossier mix by Peter Wheatley without the band's permission and released that instead. In 2009, The Dandy Warhols released the album as originally intended under the title The Dandy Warhols Are Sound: Aside from the different mix, the tracks are presented in a different order, the song titles are sometimes slightly different, and the song "Welcome To The Monkey House" itself is cut, while the previously unreleased song "Pete Int'l Spaceport" is added.
    • Some would say the Come Down version of "Minnesoter" is an improvement over the original demo version, especially with the lyrics "I saw my baby dance a Latin number with her shirt off... but in a mood, she'd rather if I jerked off". The original had the next line go "When she moves, I really wanna jerk off" and the singer sounded like a Dirty Old Man, but in the new version, he sounds more cartoony and like he's trying to emulate Neil Young.
  • Repurposed Pop Song: "Bohemian Like You" was used for a Pontiac car commercial. The first line makes sense, "You got a great car", but fans of the group were singing the next line, "yeah, what's wrong with it today".
  • Shoegazing: Started out as a fairly shoegaze-influenced band, which is most evident on Dandys Rule OK with songs like "Ride", "Not Your Bottle", "Dick", "Nothing (Lifestyle of a Tortured Artist for Sale)", and "It's a Fast Driving Rave Up With The Dandy Warhols Sixteen Minutes". Some of their later tracks like "Be-In", "Hard On for Jesus", and "Nietzsche" fall under it too.
  • Shout-Out: The video for "You Were The Last High" is styled after Duran Duran's "Planet Earth". Rumor has it that Courtney Taylor-Taylor (a.k.a. Courtney A. Taylor) doubled his last name as a tribute to the band as well.
  • Step Up to the Microphone: Brent DeBoer, drummer and backing vocalist, sings lead on "This Is The Tide".
  • Vocal Dissonance: Courtney, whenever he's singing falsetto on songs like "Plan A" or "We Used To Be Friends". That high voice doesn't seem to fit his tall frame.
    • See also his cameo in Veronica Mars singing "Love Hurts."
    • Largely gone due to the fact that he can no longer sing falsetto.
  • Vocal Evolution: Courtney started out with an average tenor-esque voice on songs like "Not If You Were The Last Junkie on Earth", then years of smoking and drinking took their toll and deepened his voice to a baritone for songs like "Bohemian Like You", but he could still hit the falsetto high notes for "You Were the Last High" and "Plan A", until he lost his voice, and never got the high range back. He still sounds fine singing low baritone, but singing near the top of his chest voice sounds gravelly and forced. For songs in falsetto, either he sings them an octave (or several) lower, or gets Brent to sing the high notes.

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