Ok Go – This Too Shall Pass (RGM Version)

03.22.2010


OK Go just recently parted ways with EMI to start its very own independent record label, Paracadute (Italian for "parachute"), 'cause they weren't happy with EMI's decision to not allow embedding of the band's videos online. This as their latest video "This Too Shall Pass" was, like, totally going viral...

The band's no stranger to viral videos. Their 2006 music video for "Here it Goes Again," featuring choreographed dancing on treadmills, has been seen almost 50 million times and is in the top-50 most-watched videos on YouTube ever. See HERE.

"The numbers are shocking: When EMI disabled the embedding feature, views of our treadmill video dropped 90 percent, from about 10,000 per day to just over 1,000," frontman Damian Kulash wrote in an op-ed in The New York Times earlier this year. "Our last royalty statement from the label, which covered six months of streams, shows a whopping $27.77 credit to our account."

So on January 12th, 2010, the first video for the song "This Too Shall Pass" (the Marching Band version) was released [about 1.5 million views as I write – not too shabby!]. On March 1st, 2010, the second video for the song was released (the Rube Goldberg Machine version)... [and this version got – Martha get off the phone, you're gonna wanna hear this – almost 9.5 million views, as I write.].

OK Go singer-songwriter-guitarist Damian Kulash says that they view videos not as a potential source of income, but rather as another creative outlet.

"This is all sort of part of the creative project for us," he says. "I mean, the animating passion for us is to get up and chase down our craziest ideas, and sometimes those are filmic, and sometimes they're purely sounds."

For the L.A.-based, Chitown-rooted band's latest viral video "This Too Shall Pass", they assembled a team of dozens of engineers to construct a set; more than 60 takes were needed to get everything working just right during filming. Scientists from the Massachusetts Institute Of Technology, the California Insitute Of Technology and gadget firm Syyn Labs helped build 'the ultimate Rube Goldberg machine'.

London's Daily Mail sadly noted that "OK Go's latest album Of The Blue Colour Of The Sky, from which This Too Shall Pass is taken, has sold just 25,000 copies since its release two months ago."

Feel bad? Don't, they're consummate artists, currently toiling away on creating a new video for the song "End Love" from the same above-mentioned album. Also, perhaps you can can give them your disposable cash when they perform at The Mod Club in T.O. Friday, April 23, 2010.