Pretty obvious why we chose this band for this week, wouldn’t you say?
Happy President’s Day weekend, everyone. Oh, and don’t bail on this clip once “Lump” is finished, as the band follows it with their cover of the Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star.” Sweeeet.
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.
Madonna has always know how to put on a show, and she went all out for her Super Bowl halftime show. We might be partial to Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty, but we can definitely appreciate the queen of the 80s prancing around in her thigh high stockings.
Madonna also brought in some modern stars like LMFAO to spice up the show even more with some shufflin’.
All right, so there is no video to speak of here – all you see is a cover of the single. But we had to highlight this track because it’s AWESOME, a surefire Single of the Year candidate…if we still made lists like that.
The first single from their new album The Church of Rock and Roll, “I Like It” isn’t the biggest sounding Foxy Shazam song ever recorded (though not by much), but it sums up their passions and goals better than pretty much anything they’ve done up to this point. Big, Queen-like harmonies: check. Slightly off-kilter arrangement: check. Swagger: check. Sex: checkmate. Good luck getting that so-simple-it’s-brilliant chorus of “You’ve got the biggest black ass I’ve ever seen / And I like it, I like it” out of your heads between now and Monday morning. The one question is: how on earth are these guys from Cincinnati? They arrested two guys in Cincy for holding hands once.