It's been nearly 19 years to the day that OK Go released their eye-popping music video for "Here It Goes Again" on YouTube. The American rock band didn't use flashy special effects, couture fashion, or celebrity cameos to make their mark — they used a long-take dance number on treadmills and became a sensation.
What would follow would be even more complex choreography in ambitious one-take videos like "I Won't Let You Down," "Upside Down & Inside Out," and the Universal Robots collaboration seen in their latest video for "Love," off their new album, And the Adjacent Possible.
In Mashable's Say More interview series, Entertainment Editor Kristy Puchko sat down with two of the band's founding members, Damian Kulash and Tim Nordwind, to discuss the band's unique vision, which extends from its music to its videos. Kulash, who fronts the band and plays guitar, detailed how their videos not only gave them an exciting opportunity to express themselves, but also led to an unexpected way to connect with new fans.
"Our videos have wound up being basically a way to get people in the room," Kulash said.
"We get a ton of science teachers, math teachers, and art teachers showing our videos in class because it makes you want to learn about physics," Kulash explained. "That does this thing to us, where it's like, we never intended our songs to be better citizens than we are. We make these art projects because they're so fun and because we get to. You know? And it feels like a gift that we get to do it in the first place."
The pair also reflected on what happened to them once the "Here It Goes Again" video became such a smash hit online that it landed them on the stage of the MTV Video Music Awards, recreating it live. (Plus, Kulash reveals how silverware flung by his sister came into play in prepping!)
Beyond that, he talked about how OK Go figured out what would come next after they went viral.
"All the major labels were running in fear. The machinery was going, like, 'How did four dudes with zero budget just outdo all the machinery that we've built? And how do we quickly game and own that new world?' And it was like in that one moment, it felt like we could pitch any idea and people would probably want to do it," Kulash recalled. "On the other hand, this moment will pass, and this rock band we'd spent almost a decade building — we were now the treadmill guys. And it was sort of like, you could either try to outcool that...or lean into it and be like, what was really great about this?"
They decided the success was based on something about their approach. "It's the tip of an iceberg of a sense of humor and a sense of stuff-making that we really love," he continued. "Like taking something really seriously and really trying to do your very best at it — like dancing — and just swinging for the fences, anyways? There's a specific taste and texture of joy to that that some people just get and want to do. And some people just don't, right?
"And that was our thing," Kulash said. "And, like, how are we going to lean into that? We've opened up this weird trap door in our career and in the music industry, and nobody knows where it's going to lead. But as long as we force our creativity through it...we're going to make weird effing art projects as opposed to being like, we're going to do more crazy dances. We kind of knew the videos were going to be the medium for that. I don't think if we had an experimental noise rock record next all of a sudden that would have had the same effect. But it did encourage us to be like, 'This is only going to work if you keep on pushing your weirdest ideas to their limits.'"
For more from OK Go, check out the full Say More interview on YouTube, where Kulash and Nordwind talk about how they met, the importance of mix tapes, and what it was like having the Muppets over for band rehearsal.
