40 Fun Facts About Car Seat Headrest

Will Toledo recorded early Car Seat Headrest vocals in the back seat of his family's car in search of what?

Privacy was hard to find at home, so he sang into his laptop's built-in microphone there and did not buy a separate one for the project's first three years.

Members of which hip-hop band backed Car Seat Headrest on 'Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales' on The Tonight Show in 2016?

The Roots, the show's house band, added horns and organ, giving the six-minute song a new arrangement for television.

Which new wave songwriter refused Car Seat Headrest the use of 'Just What I Needed', forcing an album recall?

Ric Ocasek of the Cars said no days before release, after learning Will Toledo had changed a line of the original, so Toledo wrote a replacement track.

The recalled first pressing of Car Seat Headrest's Teens of Denial was destroyed at the label's warehouse using what?

A garbage truck compactor crushed the discs and vinyl in the first recall in the label's history, while downloads went ahead and shops waited until July.

On which music platform did Will Toledo self-release a dozen Car Seat Headrest projects before signing a label deal?

Bandcamp hosted all twelve between 2010 and 2014, and Toledo chose the site after seeing the band Cults find an audience there.

Which illness, caught on tour in 2022, left Will Toledo bedridden and made Car Seat Headrest cancel its remaining shows?

COVID-19 turned into a long-lasting form of the illness and a histamine intolerance, and the band weighed splitting up before he was well enough to work again.

Car Seat Headrest's 2025 album The Scholars, set at a fictional university, was promoted as which kind of work?

A rock opera with a cast of eight characters, it was also the first of the band's albums to credit every member as a writer on all of its songs.

For Making a Door Less Open, Will Toledo of Car Seat Headrest performed as Trait wearing which headgear with LED eyes?

A gas mask with blinking lights and floppy, rabbit-like ears covered his head, a persona Toledo said he took on because of performance anxiety.

Car Seat Headrest's 2021 covers EP includes 'Running Up That Hill', a song first recorded by which English singer?

Kate Bush released it in 1985, and the band's cover sits on MADLO: Influences, a four-song EP issued the same day as a set of remixes.

Car Seat Headrest began in Leesburg, the hometown of Will Toledo, which lies in which US state?

Virginia is where Toledo was born and raised, and he stayed in the state for college before taking the project west.

Which New York indie label, the home of Pavement and Liz Phair, signed Car Seat Headrest in 2015?

Matador began in founder Chris Lombardi's apartment in 1989, and its first Car Seat Headrest release reworked songs from Will Toledo's solo years.

After college, Will Toledo moved to which Pacific Northwest city, where Car Seat Headrest became a full band?

Seattle became the band's base in 2014, and a decade later its first show after two years off the stage was held at the city's Woodland Park Zoo.

Where did Will Toledo find a drummer and a bassist when Car Seat Headrest grew from a solo project into a band?

Craigslist brought in both players for the first label album, and the guitarist who joined soon afterwards met the group at an open mic.

Car Seat Headrest's 'Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales' was the second Teens of Denial single, after which seven-minute song?

Vincent arrived with a video in February 2016, a month before the follow-up premiered on the day Will Toledo announced when the album would come out.

Which crooner's life influenced Car Seat Headrest's Teens of Denial and is named in the subtitle of 'Connect the Dots'?

Frank Sinatra also shaped an earlier song: Will Toledo drew on him for the chord progression of the fourteen-minute opener of How to Leave Town.

Which cruise ship, wrecked off Italy in 2012, is named in the title of an eleven-minute Car Seat Headrest ballad?

Costa Concordia ran aground after leaving its route for a sail-past of an island, and the song named after it borrows from Dido's hit White Flag.

Which electronic Radiohead song from Kid A was a noted influence on Car Seat Headrest's Making a Door Less Open?

Idioteque, built on a drum-machine pattern, pointed the way to an album the band made twice: once with guitars and drums, once with synthesized sounds.

Which 1990s hitmakers covered Car Seat Headrest's 'Something Soon' and had their song 'Fallen Horses' covered in return?

Smash Mouth, the band behind All Star, got there first, and Car Seat Headrest answered with its cover the day before a new album came out in 2018.

Car Seat Headrest's 2018 full-band remake of the album Twin Fantasy carries which subtitle in brackets?

Face to Face marks the remake, and the lo-fi 2011 original was renamed Mirror to Mirror only once the new one existed.

Alongside Audacity, which Apple music program did Will Toledo use to make early Car Seat Headrest albums on a laptop?

GarageBand cost nothing, which suited a project he began straight after high school and released anonymously after earlier aliases found no audience.

In Minneapolis in 2016, Will Toledo began Car Seat Headrest's 'Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales' alone on which instrument?

Piano carried the opening before the others joined in, and the group posted the performance online straight after the show.

How does Car Seat Headrest's December 2016 single version of 'Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales' differ from the album cut?

It is shorter: the band went back and cut a new single-length take of the six-minute song, released the same week as its Tonight Show performance.

Teens of Denial, the album with 'Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales', was the first Car Seat Headrest record to be made where?

A studio and an outside producer were both firsts for the band after years of home-made albums, and Will Toledo had promised a totally different sound.

Car Seat Headrest's 'Cute Thing' borrows part of 'Ana Ng', a 1988 single by which alternative duo?

They Might Be Giants were among the acts Will Toledo named as inspirations for Twin Fantasy, alongside Pink Floyd, of Montreal and Destroyer.

Which website, along with Reddit, helped Car Seat Headrest's Twin Fantasy build its early online cult following?

4chan and Reddit users spread an album that only about 100 people downloaded at first; by 2018 the count had passed 33,000.

Which Car Seat Headrest epic in three parts, over twelve minutes long, returned as a surprise remake in late 2017?

Beach Life-in-Death took shape as Will Toledo walked around his college town working out how its sections fit, and it set the palette for Twin Fantasy.

Which Car Seat Headrest drummer makes comedy dance music with Will Toledo as the side project 1 Trait Danger?

Andrew Katz performs in the duo as Stoney, and its experiments fed the electronic turn of Making a Door Less Open.

Car Seat Headrest's The Scholars drew on David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust and the album Tommy by which British band?

The Who built that 1969 double album around a character named Tommy Walker, and Shakespeare, Mozart and Biblical texts fed into The Scholars too.

Which Making a Door Less Open single took Car Seat Headrest into the top 30 of Billboard's Alternative Songs chart?

Hollywood pairs the drummer's shouts with Will Toledo's soft delivery, and Toledo said it is about people who exploit others to keep a fantasy alive.

Born with the surname Barnes, Will Toledo of Car Seat Headrest took his stage surname from which source?

His mother's maiden name gave him Toledo; before that he had released music under two other aliases while still at high school.

Will Toledo made Car Seat Headrest's Twin Fantasy after transferring to which college, where he majored in English?

William & Mary took him in after one lonely semester elsewhere; he minored in religious studies there and played early shows with fellow students.

Which brass instrument did Will Toledo of Car Seat Headrest play in his high school marching band?

Trombone was his marching instrument at Loudoun County High School, where he also joined a band and began putting out solo music online.

Will Toledo's first four Car Seat Headrest albums, all released in the summer of 2010, share which kind of title?

Plain numbers, 1 to 4, are all they carry; the first two leaned on samples and loose structures before a lo-fi guitar style settled in on the next pair.

Will Toledo calls My Back Is Killing Me Baby, Twin Fantasy and Monomania a Car Seat Headrest triptych about what?

One relationship runs through all three, and Monomania, about the break-up, was the only one written after it had ended.

Why did bassist Jacob Bloom leave Car Seat Headrest shortly after the band released Teens of Style?

To attend medical school, he gave up the bass spot; his replacement later moved to guitar, and a fourth member took over the low end.

Which Car Seat Headrest song, nearly eleven minutes long, premiered on BBC Radio 6 as the lead single from The Scholars?

Gethsemane first reached fans piece by piece, unlocked through puzzles on the band's website, which had been restyled to look like a 1990s homepage.

Which veteran of early Nirvana sessions was the outside producer on Car Seat Headrest's Teens of Denial?

Steve Fisk, long tied to the Pacific Northwest scene, came back a decade later when the band reworked the same album for its tenth anniversary.

Which Car Seat Headrest double album, more than two hours long, gathers songs Will Toledo wrote between ages 17 and 21?

Nervous Young Man came with a bonus for anyone who paid five dollars or more: Toledo personally emailed them a companion set of outtakes.

The Car Seat Headrest song 'Kimochi Warui', from How to Leave Town, takes its title from which 1997 anime film?

The End of Evangelion lent the phrase to the third track of an hour-long EP, the last thing Will Toledo self-released before the band era began.

Whose hour-long 2010 EP All Delighted People inspired Will Toledo to call Car Seat Headrest's How to Leave Town an EP?

Sufjan Stevens showed that an EP could run to album length, and Toledo used the label for songs that began as discarded demos for Teens of Denial.