Kaiser Chiefs’ Ricky Wilson: ‘We were an acceptable punching bag’
In a café in north London, silent but for the whirr of coffee makers and steam, the frontman of the Kaiser Chiefs is wondering why people used to make fun of the Kaiser Chiefs. “I think we were an acceptable punching bag,” Ricky Wilson says, still a little bruised. He remembers an NME Awards in the late Noughties, when a comedian introduced the Best Album category and joked that the award was meaningless as Kaiser Chiefs had won it a few years earlier. “And he said it because he knew it was an acceptable joke, and that no one was going to complain about it.” Wilson shakes his head. “It annoyed me because even if you think our band’s s***, it’s still an easy joke. We were an easy punch for a lot of people.”
The band arrived in 2004, . was still mean. Nothing was more objectionable than a band actively wanting a hit record, which the Kaiser Chiefs did. Wilson didn’t particularly help in that department, infamously joking in 2005, somewhat inevitably, claiming they sat “on top of an apex of meaninglessness”, among far more cruel jibes. A book called devoted substantial page space to their output.
