As tributes for Ozzy Osbourne came pouring in Tuesday night, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs added their own memorial during a sold-out performance at Chicago Theatre.
“We love you Ozzy!” singer Karen O shouted to the rafters, dedicating the set to the music legend as her fellow bandmates closed out the night with an instrumental cover of Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid.”
The gesture was not only a kind antidote for fans still reeling from the shocking news of Osbourne’s passing on Tuesday (including guitarist Nick Zinner, who’s part of Black Sabbath tribute band BSCBR), but it was a high point in a show that was anything but expected from the art-punk trio. Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ current Hidden In Pieces Tour is a stripped-back, retooled affair custom-made for intimate theaters, in which the group’s garage rock fuzz, rebellious punk spirit and energetic abandon on stage have been swapped with orchestral arrangements, acoustic instruments — and chairs.
“One thing we’ve been telling our seated audiences is, if you feel the need to stand up and move your body tonight, that’s up to you and you are very welcome to do that,” O shared at the top of the set. By the very next song (the deep cut “Miles Away”), the crowd happily obliged.
Like everything Yeah Yeah Yeahs does, this night was pure theatrical art, even down to cooler-than-cool O’s Roaring ’20s flapper look with a long cloak, boa and headpiece that became their own kind of props as she moved and swayed with the fabrics.
The show was put together as a celebration of the group’s 25th anniversary, including several throwbacks to their origin story. “This one goes back to our roots,” O said to introduce a cover of Bjork’s “Hyperballad,” a song she and Zinner would often include in their sets when performing as the pre-Yeah Yeah Yeahs act Unitard. “This is what we sounded like when Nick and I started playing music together … with acoustic guitar and slide guitar and love songs.”
Running just over an hour, Tuesday’s artsy performance had a mix of science, too. The entourage — also including founding member drummer Brian Chase, longtime touring asset Imaad Wasif and a newly added mini-symphony featuring an upright bassist and four strings players — carefully dissected the meat and bones of some of Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ most known tracks and pieced them back together in a new sonic puzzle, which further added to the emotional gravitas of their songbook.
The acoustic plucking on “Gold Lion” added a softness to its trademark thumping beats. The drums on “Warrior” hit harder alongside other muted instruments, making the song even more tribal. The mood-setting piano intro of “Runaway” set a cinematic vibe. The massive crescendo of strings on “Skeletons” was so visceral that even Ennio Morricone would’ve been envious he didn’t write the arrangement himself.
But it was “Maps” that stole the show as the dialed-back instrumental accompaniment put emphasis on O’s lyrics and made the love song even more heartbreaking. Naturally, it garnered the biggest audience response of the night and the most participation as the crowd responded to O’s invitation to sing along to the chorus, filling the theater with a choir of voices. It was a rare occasion when you wished there had been a mandate to put phones away so everyone could live in that moment.
For a band 25 years into their craft and plucked from New York’s rough-on-the-edges, turn-of-the-century indie rock scene, seeing Yeah Yeah Yeahs so soft in their approach was refreshingly unexpected but also the true hallmark of artists not afraid of reinvention.
“This is a very vulnerable set of ours,” O admitted, adding in her own fine print disclaimer. “Nothing is more punk rock than vulnerability … especially in times like these.”
There were moments of levity, though, too. On “Cheated Hearts,” O was jumping around as Zinner and Wasif nearly flung their instruments into the air. By the encore, a spirited delivery of “Zero,” a disco ball spat patterns all over the theater while eyeball-printed beach balls were flung into the crowd, mimicking the let-loose vibe of Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ more traditional rock shows.
“Remember when times are difficult, music makes everything better,” O said in one chunk of parting words. It was right before Zinner took out a camera to snap pictures of the crowd to remember the night for everything it represented, good times and sad.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs Set List at Chicago Theatre July 22, 2025
Blacktop
Miles Away
Gold Lion
Hyperballad (Bjork cover)
Cheated Hearts
Isis/Warrior
Runaway
Skeletons
Spitting Off the Edge of the World
Maps
Turn Into
Y Control
Encore
Zero
Paranoid (Black Sabbath instrumental cover)