Their other videos may have taken more discipline in terms of getting those one-take shots right, but one could make a valid argument that this is OK Go’s most ambitious video yet. Music on wheels!
Here’s the story: OK Go teamed up with Chevrolet – funny how this used to be viewed as a sellout move, but in today’s musical climate, it’s not just survival, it’s savvy business acumen – to produce a two-mile track in the desert outside of Los Angeles where the band strategically placed instruments so that, when the band drove the new Chevy Sonic at a certain speed, it would play a bare-bones version of their song “Needing/Getting” while they sang along in headsets and wearing race car-type crash gear, of course. Once again, each member is wearing his own color, but they’re not the same colors they wore in the videos for “End Love” or “This Too Shall Pass.” Actually, guitarist Andy Ross is wearing red for a second time, but by and large, these guys have a thing about making sure they do not repeat themselves.
As a friend of ours said, they’re the hardest working band in music videos. That may not sound like much, but there is something to be said for creating something indelible. Pop music has given up on immortality, and instead focused on the now. At least someone is still looking at the long term. Don’t be surprised if nearly everything about this generation’s music is forgotten, while OK Go’s videos live on and on.
Finally. We’ve been putting this song on mix discs and playlists from the moment that OK Go lead singer Damian Kulash was nice enough to send us the band’s new album Of the Blue Colour of the Sky after a phone interview last December, and at long last, the Princealicious “White Knuckles” (dig that guitar in the break) is a single. This may not be the most eye-popping of the videos the band’s made for this record, but it’s still another impossibly well-planned one-take video. Plus, we’re guessing the band will tell you that this one was the most difficult to execute, given that they shared the stage with, to use a LOLcats expression, goggies. Lots of very well-trained goggies.
Bassist Tim Nordwind handles lip syncing duties yet again, and if they keep this up, people are going to think he’s the actual singer (psst! Kulash is the one that kinda looks like Hugh Grant’s little brother), but good luck paying attention the band in this one. With the exception of the chair dancing bit (it’ll make sense when you see it), the dogs are the stars from the moment two of them do three laps around their feet. To say any more would spoil the fun. Watch, and watch again.
And, as a bonus, here is OK Go drummer Dan Konopka getting into a staring contest with Animal. Yes, that Animal. Cheers.
When I posted the latest simple-but-awesome video from OK Go to my Facebook page, a friend joked, “No hot tubs? Bitches and hos? Gold chains/teeth? Money being thrown in the air?”
Exactly.
Truth be told, it’s hard to believe that all of those hip hop video cliches still exist. The money they’re throwing? Not real. Hot tub? Only if you want to contract hepatitis. The women? Well, most of them are ho’s, if that one woman’s tell-all book about her life as a video vixen is to be believed. Either way, none of those clips stand apart from the others, and if your video doesn’t stand apart, then odds are your song won’t, either.
OK Go clearly knows this, because they have made a game out of constructing music videos that are easy on the eyes – in that they don’t include a million jump cuts – yet impossibly complex. Their last clip, the Rube Goldberg puzzle “This Too Shall Pass,” set the bar impossibly high, but damned if “End Love” doesn’t rise to the challenge. Using the stop-motion photography that Zbigniew Rybczyński made famous in his clip for the Art of Noise’s “Close (To the Edit),” OK Go shoot a clip that appears to be taking place in real time…really lengthy real time, like 24 hours. And then, just to be cute, they include a couple of super slo-mo shots and at least one shot at normal speed. And check out the goose that follows them everywhere.
