Arcade Fire frontman Win Butler is addressing critical reviews of the band’s latest album, Everything Now, and the promotional campaign behind it.
“Part of me hopes that this record is our stinker, our horrible record,” Butler told The Guardian. “Because if it is, then we may be the greatest band of all time.
“It’s pretty funny to me. If that’s the worst thing we can possibly do then I’m at peace.”
Everything Now was released last summer with a social media and marketing campaign that included “fake news” about the band and its supposed contractual obligations to the fictitious Everything Now Corporation.
Butler said the campaign was created by “really clever people” from the New Yorker and satirical news site The Onion.
“Some of the critical response to the themes that we were talking about was: ‘We know this already! You’re worried about corporations? Boring!,’” he said. “But I look at the moment we’re in. We’ve got a reality star in charge of the United States, and everything that we love and care about is filtered through this incredible corporate structure.”
MORE: Arcade Fire's Win Butler Eyes Canadian Citizenship
Although Arcade Fire has roots in Montreal, Butler is American and lives in New Orleans with his Canadian wife – and bandmate – Régine Chassagne and their son Eddie. He told The Guardian he can’t believe he’s back in the U.S., “where the prison system, health care and education is so crazy, a system set up to screw over poor people.”