"Asking the Black Keys 'Why do you play the blues so good?' would be like asking a cloud 'Why are you fluffy so good?' How the hell is someone supposed to answer that? It's like a Zen koan."
—Brian J. Bowe, Creem Online
The Black Keys are a Grammy-winning Blues Rock band from Akron, Ohio formed in 2001. While some of their albums have featured session musicians, the core band consists of only two members - Dan Auerbach (guitar, vocals) and Patrick Carney (drums).
Early in the band's career, much media attention was placed on their raw, minimalistic style, the result of a recording technique euphemistically referred to as "medium-fidelity", described by the band as "equal parts broke-ass shit to equal parts hot-ass shit." Since Attack and Release, however, their sound has been a bit more expansive, adding more sonic detail while keeping the band's Blues Rock sound front and center. The music video for "Howlin' for You" is so troperiffic that it has its own page.
Not to be confused with The Black Eyed Peas.
Discography:
- The Big Come Up (2002)
- Thickfreakness (2003)
- Rubber Factory (2004)
- Magic Potion (2006)
- Attack and Release (2008)
- Blakroc (2009)
- Brothers (2010)
- El Camino (2011)
- Turn Blue (2014)
- Let's Rock (2019)
- Delta Kream (2021)
- Dropout Boogie (2022)
- Ohio Players (2024)
Tighten up on your tropes, you're running wild:
- Album Title Drop: Magic Potion gets one in "Modern Times". Turn Blue in its corresponding title track.
- A Wild Rapper Appears!: They don't normally do this, with one major exception: Blakroc. The entire album is built on this concept, turning the normal trope up to eleven.
- The only other main exception is "The Baddest Man Alive", made for RZA's film The Man with the Iron Fists and featuring a Boastful Rap from RZA himself.
- Bad to the Bone: Their songs see a lot of use in movie trailers, most often "Lonely Boy" and "Howlin' for You."
- Badass Boast: "The Baddest Man Alive", as you might guess from the title, consists of nothing but this and Boastful Rap courtesy of RZA.
- Big Rock Ending: Often, to the point they finish concerts with their biggest use of this trope, "I Got Mine".
- Break-Up Song: Brothers and Turn Blue are filled with them, as each member was experiencing a divorce (Carney in the former, Auerbach in the latter).
- Broken Pedestal: They were asked to induct Steve Miller into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame, being big fans. Given he was overtly critical about the Hall and didn't care about who they were (Miller himself later said he wanted his induction by friend Elton John), they regretted the experience, leaving even before Miller's angry speech.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Patrick Carney - celebrated musician, veteran of the garage rock scene, curator of an Instagram that goes out of its way to be as weird as possible. If you didn't know who he was, you'd assume he was a FYAD veteran rather than a famous drummer.
- Chiaroscuro: The front cover of The Big Come Up.
- Cover Album: Chulahoma: The Songs of Junior Kimbrough and Delta Kream consist of covers of North Mississipi blues standards that influenced the band.
- Covers Always Lie: The vehicle◊ pictured on the cover of El Camino is NOT an El Camino. Instead it's a Plymouth van like those the band rode in their first tour.
- Cover Version: Almost every Black Keys album, save for Magic Potion, Attack and Release, and El Camino, has included at least one cover.
- Epic Rocking: "Weight of Love", the first song from Turn Blue, clocks in at 6:50 (the vocals only come in after 2 minutes) and is loaded with guitar solos.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The cover for Brothers reads, "This is an album by The Black Keys. The name of this album is Brothers." The album's singles follow suit, and not even the related merch was immune!
- Genre Throwback: Their style would honestly be more at home in The '70s than The New '10s.
- Gratuitous Spanish:
- In the "Howlin' for You" video, the band is referred to as Las Teclas de Negro.
- El Camino.
- Instrumentals: "Black Mud", which was nominated for a Grammy.
- Insult Backfire: They infamously decried Nickelback, but in the process called them "The biggest band in the world". The many reasons why this is not really an insult should be pretty obvious.
- Long-Runner Line-up: Type 1 (not counting session/tour musicians).
- Minimalistic Cover Art: Brothers has nothing but text on a black background reading "This is an album by The Black Keys. The name of this album is Brothers." The cover design won a Grammy.
- Nerd Glasses: Pat wears them.
- New Sound Album:
- Attack and Release, due largely to the involvement of Danger Mouse.
- Brothers emphasized elements of soul music while rolling back Attack And Release's psychedelia somewhat.
- With Danger Mouse back on board, El Camino adds backing instruments and backing singers, stretching somewhat away from the Garage Rock "drummer-and-guitarist/singer" rock duo sound.
- Turn Blue turns back towards Psychedelic Rock while also leaning toward Rap Rock.
- Ordinary People's Music Video: The video for "Lonely Boy" consists entirely of security guard Derrick T. Tuggle dancing and miming to the song.
- Pun-Based Title: Turn Blue is not only a reference to their Blues influence, but how a Creator Breakdown inspired the whole thing.
- Real Trailer, Fake Movie: The video for "Howlin' for You"
- Record Producer: Brian Burton (aka Danger Mouse) produced Attack and Release and El Camino as well as "Tighten Up" from Brothers. In recent years, Auerbach has become an in-demand producer himself.
- The Rival: The White Stripes, appropriately enough. Another blues-based duo with a name inspired by piano keys.
- Made all the more real when Jack White's emails leaked in 2013 containing several undiplomatic statements about them.
- Shout-Out:
- Let's Rock is a big one to Twin Peaks, right down to the titles of both the album and the final track, "Fire Walk With Me".
- In "The Baddest Man Alive", one of the lyrics is "I wear a super-suit like I'm incredible."
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: Patrick Carney has a really foul mouth, especially when he's trash-talking other people or artists. However, he also seems to do it a lot even when he isn't expressing disdain for anything in particular, so it's definitely not limited to just those situations.
- Three Chords and the Truth
