Courtney Barnett Brings Infectious Anxiety to ‘Colbert’
Courtney Barnett brought a mixed bag of crunchy riffs and social anxiety to The Late Show With Stephen Colbert Wednesday with a performance of “Nobody Really Cares If You Don’t Go to the Party.”
The Australian rocker (clad in a Midnight Oil T-shirt for good measure) and her band breezed through the uptempo cut, which boasts a hook as infectious as its message is endearingly neurotic: “I wanna go out, but I wanna stay home.”
“Nobody Really Cares” appears on Barnett’s 2015 LP, Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit. The acclaimed album helped Barnett garner a Grammy nod for Best New Artist, though she lost the category to Meghan Trainor.
Still, in the lead-up to the awards show, Barnett spoke with Rolling Stone about how surreal it was just to be nominated. “It kind of feels nice because of the type of music I play, and where I’ve come from, like putting out my own records, running my record label from my house still in Australia,” she said. “And to be touring around and to then be, suddenly, on this level of recognition, on the other side of the world, feels really nice.”