Ben Gibbard on Death Cab For Cutie being featured in The O.C.: "It's an odd chapter in our band’s history that is now 25 years deep"

In a recent interview with Stereogum, Death Cab For Cutie's lead vocalist Ben Gibbard spoke about the band being heavily featured in Fox's The O.C. series in the early 2000's, and how it's "an odd chapter in our band’s history that is now 25 years deep."

"We’d never seen a TV show where a fictional character is talking about a real band that is not a household name," Gibbard said. "It'd be like, "I love the Beatles." Yeah, of course, we all love the Beatles. Or like, "Led Zeppelin rules." But the idea that a TV show on one of the four major networks would have this character on one of their shows that was name-checking a band that for all intents and purposes was pretty underground at that point? Our biggest record had sold 40 or 50,000 copies, which was certainly good for the time, but by no means put us in an echelon that we would think that we would be getting name-checked on national television. And then as the show continued on, they kind of started really leaning into the, you know, "Seth Cohen loves Death Cab and Bright Eyes" and whomever else. There was a moment where it started to feel like, oh, it’s just gonna be - it’s gonna be bad, you know? It felt like it got a little out of control. I guess we could have maybe called the show and said, "Stop doing this.""

He continued, "There were periods in the immediate wake of The O.C. that I started getting a little defensive about the fact that, look, we’ve been here for quite a while and we’ve been trending upwards. We appreciate the exposure that The O.C. gave us. And it was incredibly helpful to our careers. But were there moments where you were fearful that it was going to tip into the not good kind of exposure."

As well as speaking about how the series brought new people to their shows, Gibbard said, "I didn’t really mind talking about [The O.C.] then. I definitely don’t mind talking about it now, because it’s an odd chapter in our band’s history that is now 25 years deep. If somebody wants to claim in 2022 that the only reason we’re here is because of The O.C., I guess you could do that. But you know, that show has been off the air for 15 years, and we’re still here playing to pretty good crowds."