NYC

"NYC" is track three of Turn On the Bright Lights, 4:20 on the album page and 4:21 on the single page, written by all four members and recorded at Tarquin in November 2001. It was previewed on the June 2002 Interpol EP, and released with "Say Hello to the Angels" as a double A-side on April 14, 2003 on Matador (7-inch OLE582-2), with a demo on the CD; it reached number 65 on the UK singles chart and eight on the UK indie chart. Katis told Paste it worked because there is a great amount of space. Doug Aitken directed the video, a montage of band pictures and designs intercut with a park at night.

Banks, asked about the subway in the song, said he thinks it represents a wave of insignificant chaos. Stereogum calls it the debut's emotional core and elegiac NYC boosterism, written for a band arriving at just the right distance from 9/11, and Spin called it decadently melancholy, with Kessler's guitar beautifully sorrowful. Pitchfork ranked it 140th among the top 500 tracks of the 2000s, Consequence of Sound 46th among the singles of the decade and Slant 219th. A Peel session version is on the 2012 reissue bonus disc. Setlist.fm shows 789 plays, their eighth most played song, behind "Evil" (1,099), "Obstacle 1" (1,076) and "Slow Hands" (1,070). Nothing was verified on covers or samples; a 2026 Spin piece says Michael Stipe played a solo acoustic version at a 2003 Madison Square Garden show, which no other source confirms.