Who is this character “Jonathan Low”? And was the song written expressly for the Twilight movie?
KOENIG: Well, it was an older song that I’d actually started writing in high school. So a lot of the framework of the song was there, but we came up with a new arrangement and kinda finished it for the movie. So we certainly had the movie in mind when we were recording it, when Rostam (Batmanglij, VW multi-instrumentalist) was coming up with all these new string arrangements. So it wasn’t some random thing, like “Here — maybe you could use this.” We really put the effort into recording it for the movie. I must’ve been about 15, 16 when I came up with the character of Jonathan Low. He’s like a tragic hero. I remember in high school I had to read the book Trinity by Leon Uris, an epic of modern Ireland, and I felt so moved by that book as a young, sensitive teenager. And when I was revisiting the song and looking at the original lyrics, I definitely sensed a lot of Trinity in it. SHOCKHOUND: Speaking of lyrics, “Holiday” on the surface seems like this upbeat summery anthem. But if you li
