The Hives Just Want to Scare Other Bands

The latest in pop-culture news, recaps, and reviews, plus close reads, profiles, interviews, and more from Vulture.com. [Brand Logo]( song roulette [The Hives Just Want to Scare Other Bands]( Pelle Almquist on the six songs that shaped the Swedish rockers. Photo-Illustration: Vulture. Photo: Getty Images There’s an amusing irony to [the Hives](’ “Hate to Say I Told You So” becoming the most popular song of their career. The Swedish garage rockers somehow didn’t think it was lead-single material. “We didn’t see the potential in it,” says front man Pelle Almqvist. For their 2000 sophomore album, Veni Vidi Vicious, they were much more confident about “Die, All Right!,” a morbid and riotous foot-stomper. But when that track failed to chart or garner any attention, it served as an early lesson in single selection: Get an outside opinion. This is a common scenario for artists, who have to negotiate a delicate balance between themselves and their labels when choosing the track to represent the album cycle ahead. The Hives had to contend with the process once again on The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons, their first record in 11 years. There’s no simple formula to guide how a given act should decide on their lead single, and you can’t discount the impact of pressure applied by label brass. But the band’s approach changed forever after the “Die, All Right!” letdown: “It should be the song that people like the most,” says Almqvist, “and not the song we like the most.” In Hives-speak, that meant other people would help decide going forward. They sure as hell weren’t going to be blamed for another flop. [read more]( The Latest TV Recaps • And Just Like That …: [Prelude to the Last Supper]( [Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( Stories We Think You’ll Like [What We Love (and Hate) About Free Streaming in 2023 An emergency discussion about our “no-commitment relationship” with FAST.]( [It’s All in Franz Rogowski’s Gaze The star of the summer’s most intimate, explicit movie, Passages, reveals what’s behind his now-famous stare.]( By Matt Zoller Seitz [Selena Gomez’s Single ‘Single Soon’ Is Out Soon But don’t expect an album to follow quite yet.]( By Justin Curto [Cat Performances, Ranked A celebration of the 25 greatest feline roles — with no CGI, human-cat hybrids in sight.]( By Bilge Ebiri [The Retrievals Is a Nightmare The latest Serial Productions podcast examines how one fertility center failed to see excruciating pain.]( By Nicholas Quah [Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( [Today’s Crossword]( 14-Across, Nine Letters: Archer character voiced by Amber Nash. Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Getty Images Vulture Recommends We consume it all so you don’t have to. Photo: National Geographic Narrated by Daveed Diggs, Growing Up Wild is a throwback to the “package films” that got Disney through World War II (relatively) unscathed. Only this time around, instead of cobbling together animated shorts and featurettes to make a movie-length collection, Growing Up Wild combines some of the most adorable moments from other Disneynature films — African Cats, Bears, Monkey Kingdom, and Chimpanzee — with a focus on the animals from those films when they were babies. Check out Growing Up Wild and the [other best nature documentaries on Disney+](, compiled by Vulture! [Read more from Vulture]( A newsletter of TV and movie recommendations. [Sign up]( to get it every week. [Get the Newsletter]( [logo]( [facebook logo]( [instagram logo]( [twitter logo]( [unsubscribe]( | [privacy notice]( | [update preferences]( This email was sent to {EMAIL}. Was this email forwarded to you? [Sign up now]( to get this newsletter in your inbox. [View this email in your browser.]( You received this email because you have a subscription to New York. Reach the right online audience with us For advertising information on email newsletters, please contact AdOps@nymag.com Vox Media, LLC 1201 Connecticut Ave. NW, 12th Floor Washington, DC 20036 Copyright © 2023, All rights reserved