karen o. is the shirley temple of rock. and i would not like the yeah yeah yeahs if she were a man. it is her cooing that keeps songs like "tick," "black tongue," and, yeah, even "bang" from being garage-rock bores. a chorus of "uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, OOOH" would simply not work in the hands of a male singer, and i'm sure it doesn't even translate to the page very well. it is the pitch hit on that "OOOH" that resonates with me, somewhere south of a girlish shriek, somewhere north of an orgasm.

and i'm not sure what this says about me. am i a sexist? am i merely buying into karen o.'s shtick unquestioningly? for the record, i've seen her and i'm not really that attracted to her -- does this mitigate things? or does it make me even more irredeemably male, i.e. the phone-sex-operator effect?