The Strokes released “Under Cover Of Darkness” in 2011, ten years after their landmark debut record, Is This It.

The video for “Under Cover Of Darkness” contains a reference to “Last Nite” when Julian Casablancas throws his microphone stand (which he also did in the video for “Last Nite”) as he’s singing this lyric leading some to believe he was talking about himself. In 2014, he was asked specifically about this line and he said it was an opinion on the music business, not about any specific band:

http://youtu.be/rnLwTcCTFN4?t=7m11s

Ultimately, he’s criticizing pop-music producing basically the same songs for over ten years, using the same chord progressions, melody, and lyrical concepts without ever innovating or allowing progress.

Our narrator has a tendency to drink massive quantities of alcohol, about as much as there is water in an aquarium.

As “American aquarium” can be abbreviated “AA,” this could also be a reference to Alcoholics Anonymous

Just as the cover art for Yankee Hotel Foxtrot incorporates a Chicago icon (the Marina City Towers), the album’s opening line also may alludes to the opening line to Chicagoan Saul Bellow’s novel The Adventures of Augie March:

I am an American, Chicago born—Chicago, that somber city—and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent.

This line also inspired the name of the popular music blog Aquarium Drunkard

The United Kingdom has been a large tourist destination for many years. It currently is the world’s 7th biggest tourist destination, with 29.2 million visiting in 2011. US $17.2 billion was spent in the UK by foreign tourists.

For the ongoing debate with Monarchists and Republicans in the UK, one of the most common arguments on the Monarchist side is that the Queen brings in so much tourism this validates her. The Sex Pistols are critiquing this suggesting that the money is not worth having a ‘Fascist’ Monarchy. Furthermore, this argument is pretty easily disproved, since the lack of a reigning monarch doesn’t seem to have harmed Versailles' income much: it’s the history and appearance tourists are interested, not the person, which ties in neatly with the earlier comment that the Queen isn’t human.

People made him a persona and forced him to be it (brought him to his knees). The hardest or most disappointing thing is that the mask he’s putting on himself, this body that doesn’t belong to him isn’t even trying to hide itself – the lines of the mask are visible for anyone, but no one cares. As if he’s wearing one of those costumes with huge heads, and no one asks why or cares.