OK Go: История американской рок-группы

American rock band
the band

OK Go is an American rock band originally from Chicago, Illinois, now based in Los Angeles, California. The band is composed of Damian Kulash (lead vocals, guitar), Tim Nordwind (bass guitar, vocals), Dan Konopka (drums and percussion), and Andy Ross (guitar, keyboards and vocals), who joined them in 2005, replacing original guitarist Andy Duncan. The band is known for its quirky and complex music videos which are often elaborately choreographed to be filmed in a single long take. The original members formed as OK Go in 1998 and released two studio albums before Duncan's departure. The band's video for "Here It Goes Again" won a Grammy Award for Best Music Video in 2007.

The band's lead singer, Damian Kulash, met bassist Tim Nordwind at Interlochen Arts Camp near Traverse City, Michigan, when they were 11. The band name comes from an inside joke developed at Interlochen; their art teacher had an often high assistant who would repeatedly say, "OK Go!" while they were drawing. They kept in touch after camp, often exchanging mixtapes which influenced each other's musical tastes and the band's future sound. They met the band's future guitarist and keyboardist Andy Duncan in high school. Nordwind and Duncan moved to Chicago for college, and, with drummer Dan Konopka, formed the band Stanley's Joyful Noise. After graduating from Brown University, Kulash moved to Chicago. The demos did not land the band a label deal, but got them the attention of booking agent Frank Riley, who offered them shows with They Might Be Giants, a relationship that led to OK Go opening for the band numerous times during this period. In 2001 the group moved to Los Angeles, although they considered their Chicago roots important even a decade later.

Though the band had offers from bigger labels, they signed to Capitol Records in April 2001 they would get more attention and support. The band released its self titled debut album on September 17, 2002, after it was pushed back by the label from its original June release date. To promote the release, the label sent out miniature ping pong tables to press outlets, and played a number of festival shows including Leeds in 2002 and 2003, and NoisePop, Reading, Witnness, and T in the Park in 2003. In the United States, the album reached #1 on the Billboard Heatseekers Chart and #107 on the Billboard 200 Chart. In the United Kingdom, the first single "Get Over It" debuted at no. 27, in the UK singles chart on March 16, 2003, and the band performed it on that week's edition of Top of the Pops. Also that week, the single's video was named video of the week by Q magazine.

The band's second album, Oh No, was recorded in Malmö, Sweden, in the fall of 2004 and was produced by Tore Johansson (the Cardigans, Franz Ferdinand) and mixed by Dave Sardy (Nine Inch Nails, Jet, System of a Down). After recording, in February 2005, Andy Duncan left the band citing creative differences, major label pressures, and the band's rigorous touring schedule. Duncan was replaced by Andy Ross, who won the job over thirty four other guitarists who auditioned for the role, in a process that ended with each candidate being asked about their willingness to do a choreographed dance on stage. The album was released in August 2005. Oh No gained popularity for its first single, "A Million Ways". Guitarist Andy Ross invented, designed and programmed a web application hosted at a1000000ways. com which allowed people to hear the single and to share it with their friends in exchange for free downloads from the iTunes music store. The video for "A Million Ways" featured the band in a backyard performing a dance choreographed by lead singer Kulash's sister, Trish Sie. By August 2006, the video had become the most downloaded music video ever with over 9 million downloads. The band performed the dance live on British TV show Soccer AM, as well as on the late night American comedy show Mad TV. The US version of the album includes "9027 km", a 35 minute track of lead singer Damian Kulash's girlfriend sleeping that is not listed on the album art. Fans speculated that the track's name is derived from the distance between Los Angeles, California, and Malmö, Sweden, where the album was recorded and that the track was included to prevent the band's label from using the extra space for digital rights management (DRM) software. In support of Oh No, the band toured extensively, sharing dates with bands such as Death Cab For Cutie, Panic! at the Disco, Kaiser Chiefs, and Snow Patrol, as well as a slew of special performances including free shows on New Year's Eve in New York City's Times Square and in the parking lot before the University of Michigan vs Michigan State University football game, and festivals such as the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Bennicassim in Spain, Formoz Festival in Taiwan, Summer Sonic in Japan, and Incheon Pentaport in South Korea. On November 7, 2006, after the success of the "Here It Goes Again" video, the band released a deluxe DVD version of the album. to raise money for musicians who were still displaced by the 2005 Hurricane Katrina. The EP, entitled You're Not Alone, was released on Mardi Gras, February 5, 2008. The title is taken from a line in David Bowie's "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide", a cover of which appears on the EP, along with renditions of Bob Dylan's "I Shall Be Released" and three songs from "Oh No." In support of the EP, OK Go and Bonearama played two benefit shows, one on January 11, 2008, at Tipitina's in New Orleans, and the other on February 2, 2008, at the 9:30 Club in Washington DC, which was streamed live by NPR and featured on a subsequent NPR podcast.

On October 12, 2008, OK Go announced that the members had finished writing new songs for its third album and were in the studios in upstate New York with producer Dave Fridmann (the Flaming Lips, MGMT). The band previewed its third album, titled Of the Blue Colour of the Sky, on a short sling of dates on the East Coast of the United States that March, starting in Philadelphia on March 6, 2009, at the TLA Theatre. The name of the album comes from a pseudo scientific book written by Augustus Pleasonton in 1876 entitled The Influence of the Blue Ray of the Sunlight and of the Blue Colour of the Sky. The members of the band have stated that these songs are the "danciest, most anthemic, most heartbroken, and honest songs" of their career, and the album itself takes a much more funky, dance prone, yet melancholy sound to it, drawing influence from Prince. On May 7, 2009, a song from the album, titled "Skyscrapers," was released for streaming online. The first single, "WTF? ", was released on November 17, 2009. On January 8, 2010, OK Go appeared on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien and performed a song from the album, "This Too Shall Pass". Of the Blue Colour of the Sky was released on January 12, 2010. After the first two videos for Of the Blue Colour of the Sky were posted to YouTube in 2009, the band was quickly met with complaints from fans who were only able to view them on YouTube. In response, Kulash posted a long letter on the band's website explaining the record label's policies. The letter itself went viral, after being reprinted in Gizmodo, cited as "required reading" on BoingBoing, and excerpted on many other websites. At the end of the letter, Kulash included embed codes for the band's most recent video in direct opposition to the desires of the label. On February 20, 2010, the New York Times printed an Op Ed in which Kulash furthered the arguments he made in his open letter. On March 9, 2010, the band uploaded a video to YouTube entitled "OK Go Announces new label," in which Kulash, accompanied by two dogs in neckties, announces the creation of Paracadute. The split became official on April 1, 2010. Paracadute then assumed ownership of the album, "Of the Blue Colour of the Sky", though the band's first two albums, "OK Go" and "Oh No" remained catalog items of EMI. That night OK Go performed a single from its newly independent record on Late Night with Jimmy Kimmel. Now charting its own destiny as an independent entity, the band has attempted to plot a new course for itself, as Kulash puts it: "We're trying to be a DIY [do it yourself] band in a post major label world." The first wholly new release on the band's label Paracadute Recordings was 180/365, a live album recorded over several shows in 2010, mixed by producer David Fridmann, and released on June 21, 2011. The album title refers to the number of concerts the band played in the course of one year. A stream of the album premiered on the technology website Mashable before its official street date. To celebrate the release, the band printed and sold two hundred signed copies of 180/365: The Book, a limited edition book of tour photographs by Nathaniel Wood which was made available only to purchasers of the album. The album was sold digitally and on CD in six panel eco friendly "Tron Pack" packaging from Norway. In July 2012, the band partnered with the Humble Bundle for a pay what you will release of the remix collection Twelve Remixes Of Four Songs, alongside titles from MC Frontalot, They Might Be Giants, Christopher Tin, Hitoshi Sakimoto, and Jonathan Coulton. The band's most successful example of its new business model was a partnership with State Farm Insurance at a point when the company was looking to tap into a younger audience by creating a piece of interesting digital content. The collaboration resulted in a music video for "This Too Shall Pass" featuring a large Rube Goldberg machine built in a warehouse. Released on March 1, 2010, the video quickly went viral, with 1.4 million YouTube views in the first 48 hours Since the "This Too Shall Pass" Rube Goldberg Machine video, OK Go has employed a similar brand partnership model in projects with Range Rover, Yahoo, Cisco, Samsung, Google Chrome, Jose Cuervo, and Chevrolet.

In December 2012, OK Go released a collection of rare songs, B sides and covers called "Twelve Days of OK Go". The collection was released for free on the band's website and includes covers of songs by the Beatles, They Might Be Giants, the Kinks, Adam and the Ants, and Pixies. Following Twelve Days of OK Go, in January 2013 the band announced Twelve Months of OK Go, a free long form release of new and rare recordings, B sides, and covers distributed one song per month through the band's email list and free mp3 web store. The collection includes covers of songs by the Breeders, the Specials, and Nelly. In March 2013, OK Go released a new single "I'm Not Through" through "Twelve Months of OK Go" and in partnership with advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi for The Saatchi & Saatchi Music Video Challenge. On April 3, 2013, OK Go announced on its YouTube channel that the band was in the process of recording its fourth album. On May 6, 2014, OK Go announced that its fourth studio album, Hungry Ghosts, would be released in October 2014. The album was made available for pre order on the direct to fan platform, PledgeMusic. The first official single, "The Writing's on the Wall" was released on June 17, 2014, along with a music video that had reached over one million views within a day. On October 14, 2014, Hungry Ghosts was released. Since then, the Pledge Music campaign has stopped. A music video for "I Won't Let You Down" was released on October 27, 2014. In its first two weeks, the video hit 12 million views on YouTube. The video features a cameo from the J pop band Perfume (see Other appearances). The video for "Upside Down & Inside Out" was released on February 11, 2016, where the band perform the song while moving about in microgravity, with the aid of a reduced gravity aircraft provided by the Russian S7 Airlines. On July 20, 2016, OK Go released "I Don't Understand You," a stand alone single that was a collaboration with Perfume. On November 24, 2016, OK Go released the music video for "The One Moment", featuring multiple seemingly unconnected events filmed in the span of a few seconds. The video is then slowed down to reveal each action being played in perfect synchronization with the song. On November 23, 2017, OK Go released the music video for "Obsession." 567 printers were used to create a multicolored backdrop in the video.

In early 2020, during the beginning of the COVID 19 pandemic, Kulash and his wife fell ill with the 2019 novel coronavirus. After his recovery, while the band members were following stay at home orders at their individual homes, they wrote and recorded "All Together Now" and filmed a video for it over two months as a tribute to the healthcare workers battling the infection. The song and video were released on May 12, 2020, with proceeds going to Partners in Health. In early 2021, the band released an acoustic cover of "This Will Be Our Year" by the Zombies, which they also covered in 2004. The band has also uploaded several alternate music videos for "All Together Now" on YouTube, including various different clips sent to them by fans. Damian Kulash once stated in a livestream that he has been working on some new music, but not specifically in an album form. Kulash also hinted in an interview that he might do another video in zero gravity for a future song similarly to "Upside Down and Inside Out." The band composed a new original song, "This", for the 2023 Apple TV movie The Beanie Bubble, directed by Kulash and his wife Kristin Gore. The single and associated video were released on July 21, 2023.

In 2022 and early 2023, the band became involved in a legal dispute with Minnesota company Post Consumer Brands, which registered a trademark on the phrase "OK Go!" for a new line of portable breakfast cereals. A lawyer for the band cited a previous collaboration between OK Go and Post as evidence that the "namejacking" was most likely intentional. On May 31, 2023, OK Go and Post reached a settlement, which resulted in Post abandoning its registration of the "OK Go!" name.

OK Go has earned considerable fame for the band's creative and often low budget music videos, most of which have been promoted through Internet video sharing sites like YouTube. Many of these have become viral videos; the 2006 video for "Here It Goes Again", in which the band performed a complex routine with the aid of motorized treadmills, had received over 50 million views on YouTube four years later when EMI took it off the platform during a dispute with YouTube. The subsequent reposting has been viewed over 61 million times as of May 15, 2023. The band's video for "Needing/Getting", released February 5, 2012, in partnership with Chevrolet, debuted during Super Bowl XLVI and has over 47 million views on YouTube. Samuel Bayer, who produced many music videos in the 1990s, asserted that OK Go's promotion of music videos on the Internet was akin to Nirvana's ushering in the grunge movement. The success of OK Go's music first won the band the 14th Annual Webby Special Achievement Award for Film and Video Artist of the Year. The video for "This Too Shall Pass" was named both "Video of the Year" and "Best Rock Video" at the 3rd annual UK Music Video Awards. "This Too Shall Pass" won the LA Film Fest's Audience Award for Best Music Video, UK MVA Awards – Music Video of the Year Winner 2010, among others. The band has worked with directors including Francis Lawrence, Olivier Gondry (brother of Michel Gondry), Brian L. Perkins, Scott Keiner, and Todd Sullivan. The videos have been screened and displayed at museums, art galleries, and film festivals around the world including the Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of the Moving Image, the Edinburgh International Film Festival, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Los Angeles Film Festival, and the Saatchi & Saatchi New Director's Showcase. In 2008, Damian Kulash said that the band had not produced the music videos as part of any overt "Machiavellian" marketing campaign. "In neither case did we think, 'A ha, this will get people to buy our records.' It has always been our position that the reason you wind up in a rock band is you want to make stuff. You want to do creative things for a living." On the release of the band's video for "The Writing's on the Wall" in 2014, Kulash explained to Rolling Stone that the band continued to make such quirky videos following their success after "Here It Goes Again" because the band worried about being considered a one hit wonder: "We could go in two directions: We could either try to out cool it – try to out run it like Radiohead did with 'Creep' – or just embrace it and go, OK, what really worked here."

"Get Over It" is featured in the EA Sports video games Triple Play 2002 and Madden NFL 2003, while a censored version of "Don't Ask Me" is featured in MVP Baseball 2003 and as background to the transitions in the British TV show The Inbetweeners. Also, "Here It Goes Again" was featured in Rock Band, Guitar Hero 5 and SSX on Tour; while "Do What You Want" was featured in a back to school television campaign for J. C. Penney and the video games EA Sports NHL 06, Guitar Hero: On Tour, and Burnout Revenge. "Invincible" was a theme song for ABC's Saturday Night Football for the 2006 season. The band contributed a cover of the Zombies "This Will Be Our Year" as the lead track of Future Soundtrack for America, a political benefit album put out by Barsuk Records in the fall of 2004. Lead singer Damian Kulash wrote a how to guide entitled "How Your Band Can Fire Bush" for bands hoping to help unseat President George W. Bush. After visiting New Orleans in 2006, the band recorded an EP with New Orleans funk rock band Bonerama, to raise money for musicians who were still displaced by the 2005 Hurricane Katrina. The EP, entitled You're Not Alone, was released on February 5, 2008. In 2007, OK Go wrote the fight song for a Chicago soccer team, Chicago Fire S. C. The song was offered on the team's official website as a free download. Also in 2007, OK Go covered the Pixies "Gigantic" for American Laundromat Records Dig for Fire: A Tribute to Pixies CD. The band's song "Do What You Want" could also be heard on the in game radio in the LucasArts published video game Thrillville: Off The Rails. "Here It Goes Again" is also featured in the minigame Stunt Rider. In 2009, the band appeared as the wedding band Tastes Like Chicken in DreamWorks' I Love You, Man starring Paul Rudd and Jason Segel. In April 2010, OK Go collaborated with Brett Doar of Syyn Labs to build a speciality Rube Goldberg Machine called "The Colbert Machine" for the band's appearance on The Colbert Report. At the end of the episode, the band performed "This Too Shall Pass" with host Stephen Colbert singing lead vocals. In 2011, OK Go were featured in the meta documentary The Greatest Movie Ever Sold by Morgan Spurlock with the song "The Greatest Song I Ever Heard". In the film, Damian Kulash says: "Does that mean Hold on, if we make the theme for The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, does that mean that we're the greatest rock band ever to write a theme song?" whereby Spurlock responds: "Absolutely." On May 9, 2013, the band, through its label Paracadute, The app, which was created by guitarist Andy Ross during the band's down time, is based on an improv game which the band plays together while on tour. The band advertised the app by releasing a comedic video that introduces and explains the game. On May 15, 2013, "Say the Same Thing" became the 50 billionth download in Apple's App Store. In February 2015, the band was featured in a segment created to help children learn colors in a premiere for "The Cookie Thief", a Sesame Street movie special. In March 2015, OK Go made a cameo appearance in the music video for "Pick Me Up" by Japanese electropop group Perfume, following Perfume's cameo appearance at the beginning of OK Go's "I Won't Let You Down". In June 2019, the band was featured in the Ripley's Believe It or Not television program on the Travel Channel, showing the making of the music video for their song "The One Moment". In 2021, the band recorded the theme for the Apple TV+ children's show Hello, Jack! The Kindness Show, entitled "Try a Little Act of Kindness", and appeared as themselves in the season finale. A rendition of their song "This Too Shall Pass" titled "This Too Shall (Flash)" was included in the 2023 film The Flash.

In 2007, the band released You're Not Alone, a charity EP whose proceeds raised money for musicians displaced by Hurricane Katrina. The successful EP, which helped purchase a home for New Orleans musician Al "Carnival Time" Johnson, was the most public example of the band's increasing interest in politics and social issues, as the campaign included promotional appearances on Late Night with David Letterman as well as charity concerts. Earlier examples of the band's activism include a ten page PDF titled "How Your Band Can Fire Bush," which was written by Kulash and distributed on the band's website. Other efforts have included direct appeals to fans of the band via the band's email newsletter, auctioning themselves off on behalf of Sweet Relief Musician's Fund, and the Burrito Project in which the group enlisted fans to join them in handing out burritos to homeless people before concerts. In Chicago, the band partnered with the Inspiration Corporation, a local provider of services to the homeless. The band has played several high profile political and charity events, including a Super Tuesday Voter Awareness show hosted by Stella in 2008, and a star studded benefit in Los Angeles led by Frank Black, and including "Weird Al" Yankovic, Tenacious D, and others. Lead singer Damian Kulash has written op eds in The New York Times on digital rights management and net neutrality, an issue he also testified about in front of the House Judiciary Antitrust Task Force about in March 2008, and also discussed with the FCC commissioner. The day after that meeting, it was announced that the Internet would be reclassified under Title 2 of the telecommunications act — one of the band's short term goals, which the band members nodded to in their five word Webby acceptance speech: "Fight for Net Neutrality now." The band has also used the massive popularity of its videos to further its favored causes. Downloads of the "White Knuckles" video went to ASPCA and were earmarked for rural animal shelters, and the video itself ends with a call to support animal rescue. A marching band costume from "This Too Shall Pass" was auctioned off to feed the homeless and eleven of the signed Gretsch guitars and amplifiers used in "Needing/Getting" were sold to benefit the Fender Music Foundation, which provides instruments to music education programs. OK Go has also allowed its music on benefit albums, most notably Dear New Orleans, a 31 song online compilation that benefits a variety of New Orleans organizations. Lyrics from the band's contribution, "Louisiana Land", reference a number of New Orleans personalities and institutions, which the New Orleans Times Picayune called "indicative of just how deeply the members of OK Go waded into the local gestalt." and the Future Soundtrack for America, a compilation released by Barsuk Records that benefited MoveOn. org and Music for America, which included OK Go's cover of "This Will Be Our Year" by The Zombies. On January 18, 2017, two days before Donald Trump was inaugurated as the 45th President of the United States, OK Go released a cover of the politically charged Morrissey song "Interesting Drug". The music video includes images of Trump and other prominent political figures as bad people and ends with a list of organizations the band recommends viewers support. Fans of the band had mixed reactions, prompting this status update on OK GO's Facebook page: "Morrissey Official wrote this song almost 30 years ago but it seems truer to us now than ever. The comments we’ve gotten over the past day are fascinating. We especially applaud those who disagree with us without abandoning civility or respect. You give us hope." In recent years, OK Go has worked on OK Go Sandbox to create music videos and educational tools with the Playful Learning Lab (a partnership with the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota).

OK Go's music style has generally been regarded as alternative rock, power pop, pop rock, indie rock, and indie pop.