The band OK Go is widely known as “those guys with the video(s) on the Internet.”
The OK Go Treadmill clip for “Here It Goes Again” launched them from obscurity onto the 2006 MTV Video Music Awards stage, sending them on a two-year trek around the globe and even earning them a Grammy for Best Short-Form Music Video.
“This Too Shall Pass” was the follow up single from the album Of the Blue Colour of the Sky and was released in January 2010. The band took the unorthodox route of creating two official music videos for the song, both of which premiered on YouTube.
The first video released was directed by Brian L. Perkins and was shot in October, 2009, in South Bend, Indiana. The video is somewhat unusual in that it does not feature the album version of the song. Rather, it features an original recording that was actually performed live during filming of the video.
The marching band video was created to bridge the time between the release of the album and the expected completion of the Rube Goldberg second video. The band had originally planned to release the marching band version after the debut of the Rube Goldberg video.
The second music video for “This Too Shall Pass” was directed by James Frost. Similar to the band’s video for “Here It Goes Again”, the “This Too Shall Pass” video features a four-minute, apparent one shot sequence of the song being played in time to the actions of a giant Rube Goldberg machine ( “accomplishing something simple through complex means” ) – built in a two-story warehouse from over 700 household objects, traversing an estimated half-mile course.
The Rube Goldberg machine video premiered on YouTube on March 2, 2010. Within a day of the video’s premiere, it was viewed more than 900,000 times. The video achieved 6 million views within six days, which was comparable to the popularity of the “Here It Goes Again” video, and was considered “instantly viral” by CNN
The video which featured dominos, a falling piano, a Mars rover, and a TV showing the band’s “treadmill” video, all perfectly synchronized with the catchy song – took months to design and build, and required more than 60 takes to go off without a hitch.
OK Go shows some Muppet solidarity. The rock quartet contributes a cover of The Muppet Show’s theme song to “Muppets: The Green Album.”
