GAOTW: OK Go

OK Go is a Grammy Award-winning rock band originally from Chicago, now residing in Los Angeles.

The band's singer, Damian Kulash, met bassist Tim Nordwind at summer camp when they were 11. They met the band's original lead guitarist and keyboardist, Andy Duncan, in high school, and drummer Dan Konopka in college. They formed OK Go in 1998. Andy Duncan left the band in 2005 after they had recorded their second album, and was replaced by computer-programmer whiz Andy Ross, who auditioned for them in Chicago. The band is best known for their singles "Get Over It", "A Million Ways", and "Here It Goes Again."

They are also well known for their geek rock outfits which include waistcoats, sweater vests, ties, shirts, and dress pants (called smart trousers outside of the United States) such as khakis, office trousers or chinos which they use when performing in reminiscence of bands such as Weezer, They Might Be Giants and hellogoodbye. Influenced by artists like Cheap Trick, Raspberries, Fugazi, T. Rex and Queen, OK Go shares management with They Might Be Giants, another band with whom they toured before signing to Capitol Records.

OK Go has gained significant recognition for its low-budget music videos, most recently "Here It Goes Again", which features the band performing an intricately choreographed dance on eight treadmills. Having had some viral success with the unauthorized "A Million Ways" video, showing them dancing in a backyard, the band tried to repeat that and improvised a video using rented treadmills. The music video was filmed in one continuous shot and was uploaded to YouTube, where it has been viewed over fifteen million times. The video was popular enough to earn them the Grammy award for "Best Short-Form Music Video" in 2007 and the YouTube 2006 Video Award for "Most Creative Video".

The band also served as the house band for public radio program This American Life on the show's fifth anniversary tour. The band performed an early predecessor to their wildly successful music videos-- a choreographed dance to the song "C-C-C-Cinnamon Lips". Ira Glass, the show's host, wrote their first official bio, calling them "living catnip" and describing their songs as "part indie rock, part stadium rock, part straight up pop with the occasional whiff of Weezer or The Cars or Elliott Smith."

After OK Go's exposure on This American Life and their relationship with They Might Be Giants, the band released its self-titled debut album in 2002. In the United Kingdom, "Get Over It" debuted at No. 21 (reported on OK Go's site), in the 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 single was featured in the EA Sports video games MVP Baseball 2003 and Madden NFL 2003. Also, their song "Do What You Want" was featured in the video games EA Sports NHL 06 and Burnout Revenge.

The band contributed a cover of "This Will Be Our Year," the Zombies classic, 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 also became somewhat politically active during that election cycle, writing a heavily downloaded how-to-guide entitled "How Your Band Can Fire Bush" for bands hoping to help unseat President George W. Bush.

The band's second album, Oh No, was recorded in Malmö, Sweden and produced by Tore Johansson (The Cardigans, Franz Ferdinand) in the fall of 2004. Released in August 2005, it gained popularity for its first single, "A Million Ways," thanks to its video, which proved to be a viral Internet phenomenon in the fall of 2005. The ultra-low budget, long take video featured the band in their back yard performing a dance choreographed by lead singer Kulash's sister, Trish Sie. Using a camera borrowed from a friend, the video was produced for under ten dollars, and was apparently released without the knowledge or consent of their label, Capitol Records. 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.

The nontraditional video for "A Million Ways" is not without precedent for the band. Previous oddball video efforts featuring OK Go include their Ping Pong Instructional Video and the Federal Truth In Music Project. They also performed a choreographed dance for the song "C-C-C-Cinamon Lips" at shows after the release of their first album. It was based on N'SYNC dance routines, which they had developed for the cable access show Chic-a-go-go, which required bands to lip-sync their songs.

On July 31, 2006 the band released a video in a similar vein for "Here It Goes Again" featuring an elaborately choreographed dance on treadmills, also directed and choreographed by Trish Sie. This video was viewed by over one million people on the media site YouTube in the first six days. As of the end of January 2007, the original video upload for "Here It Goes Again" has been viewed over ten million times, putting it in 8th place for the most views of any video and 5th place for most favorited video of all time on YouTube. If the statistics for all copies of the video on YouTube are tallied together, the video has been viewed over seventeen million times. The band has worked with both world-renowned and relatively unknown directors including Francis Lawrence, Olivier Gondry (brother of Michel Gondry), Brian L. Perkins, Scott Keiner, and Todd Sullivan. On August 23, 2006, Damian Kulash appeared on The Colbert Report to talk about the unconventional popularity achieved with "A Million Ways" and "Here It Goes Again". The latter video won 2006 YouTube Award in the Most Creative category.

In OK Go's choreographed videos, their bassist Tim Nordwind lip-syncs instead of their lead singer, Damian Kulash, following the format from the dance choreographed for the song "C-C-C-Cinnamon Lips", which Tim sings. On August 31, OK Go appeared live at the 2006 MTV Video Music Awards performing their treadmill routine for "Here It Goes Again". Since the VMA performance, sales of the album & single have increased, especially on the iTunes Music Store where, as of September 5, 2006, the single has reached #11 and the album #2. On November 7, 2006, OK Go released a deluxe limited edition CD/DVD of the album Oh No. The DVD contains their videos (dancing and playing instruments), a video from 180 fans doing the " A Million Ways" dance for a YouTube contest, previously unseen footage, and a behind-the-scenes look of their treadmill rehearsals for the video and for the VMA's.

In May 2006, they toured with Panic! at the Disco; in September they were in the U.K. supporting Motion City Soundtrack, and will continue their U.S. tour supporting Snow Patrol into Spring 2007.

On January 12, 2007, OK Go made a guest appearance on the NBC show, Las Vegas. The episode, entitled "Fleeting Cheating Meeting," incorporated many songs from their Oh No album.

On February 11, 2007, OK Go and Trish Sie took home a Grammy award for "Best Short-Form Music Video" for their viral music video, "Here It Goes Again".