#22: OK Go

Yes, yes, OK. I've just wrecked your eyeballs and given you a mindfuck with more music and more videos than I've ever posted in one post before, but these guys will fuck with your mind more than I ever can. In an amazingly awesome way. My best friend introduced me to these guys way back when Here It Goes Again (that is, the treadmill video) made the Triple J Hottest 100, claiming that the video made him giggle. Then someone (dammit Sarah you hooked me) showed me both versions of This Too Shall Pass and I, uh, started to admit I had a problem. Addiction. These guys are way too awesome and boy oh boy do they deserve their rights to title of Most Kickass Music Videos Ever.

Let me share my personal philosophy about music videos. Generally, if a music video has any of these, I consider it bad:

• the singer/band doing nothing but playing the song
• clips from a movie, interspersed with the singer/band doing nothing but playing the song
• the singer/band just dancing shit that I could dance (and I can't dance)
• the singer/band just singing and doing nothing else

Because that's why you go to live shows. You pay $20 for the record to hear the song. You pay $50 for the chance to see them perform. Watching Sunday morning TV or YouTube clips, you should see something else and different. So this is what I define as a good music video:

• one with a plot
• one with a message or interpretation of the song
• one without the band
• one that takes the piss out of something (and is serious about taking the piss)
• one that does something different
• stop-motion

OK, the last one is personal taste. But OK Go are very good at doing the last two, and reasonable at the fourth one. Clearly none of the above videos have plots (though the All Is Not Lost vid does have a message of "spread love"). They also all feature the band, but at least they're doing something other than just playing the song (which any Tom, Dickhead and Harry with musical background can play anyway). They're dancing on treadmills, choreographing pooches or half-showing their genitalia through skin-tight green leotards. And yes, they have a bit of stop-motion involved as well as the one-take stuff (note the "homeless power rangers" video of End Love) and, hell yes, they take the piss out of things (see below). It's interesting, it's exciting. I prefer this to some bland video of some artist singing from only three different camera angles and relying too heavily on looks rather than inventiveness and creativity.

OK Go has gone viral. That much is obvious. So, everyone has a favourite OK Go video and (correct me if I'm wrong) the majority opinion is the Rube Goldberg video (one of the This Too Shall Pass vids): partially because we as a species are fascinated by Rube Goldberg machines (without knowing who the hell Rube Goldberg was) and partially because the band gets shot in the face with paint. Because we all like shooting. And paint. And paintballing, which this is close enough to. We also like dominoes causing bowling balls to drop liquid into a piano and all that crap because it mindfucks us. Humans are masochists when it comes to mindfucks because we're curious. But I digress.

My opinion: the Rube Goldberg video is pretty cool, I'll admit, but it's not my favourite. All Is Not Lost is my favourite song out of those (and I'm not exactly a huge fan of OK Go and their style of music to begin with), but still not my favourite video. My favourite OK Go video is below.

It's not just the band. It's taking the piss. It's doing something different. Three out of six is pretty damned good. And it's the Muppets. Hell, who doesn't like the Muppets? Except maybe a bunch of you sadsacks who can't appreciate sock puppets for what they are: a bit of fun. But anyway, OK Go are the epitome of what I like in a music video, and let me tell you, there aren't nearly enough of those music videos around. Twilight movies' soundtracks' music videos can go get fucked up the bumhole for a joke because they're twying WAY too hard to cash in on the movies' immensely undeserved popularity. And music videos like this are not trying hard enough. (That said, it features half the cast from my favourite Britcom so I'm fractionally more satisfied.)

I have issued a challenge to people to give me songs to review. Now I issue this second challenge: find me a music video I can give a perfect score of 110.8% to, and I'll review it properly here. First one to do so gets a million CJ-points.