Idolator: ok go

Would Rock Bands Be Better If They Had Their Own "Crank That"s?

Jess Harvell — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 11:20:31 EST

Soulja Boy! He's popular. Well, he sells singles. Not so much albums. But a lot of singles! So many singles. And YouTube hits. He attracts the YouTube hits. All related to a dance. A dance you may have heard, seen, or tried to do yourself! You'd think at this point there's not a single thing left to be said about Soulja Boy and the mini-trend of choreographed toe-tapping that he's sparked among aspiring popular musicians, one that's profitable for labels for the moment but not a particularly safe long term bet for reversing dipping sales. And you'd be right! Yet that fact has not stopped the Wall Street Journal from devoting many hundreds of words to recapping the tale of Soulja Boy. He's divisive! He's reopened the generation gap! He's given MC Hammer a reason to go on! And yet despite its rehashery, the WSJ's story does raise one important, semi-new, mostly implied question: Would rock bands be improved by their own dance routines? Is there room in indie for cranking that James Murphy?

While choreographed routines are still rare among rock artists, more of them are making music to fill dance floors. Popular groups such as LCD Soundsystem, Hot Chip, Justice and Daft Punk feature beats, samples and electronic melodies that often overshadow lyrics.

And why can't these guys, despite some of them not being rock bands at all, come up with their own leanings and rockings? Feist did it, sez the WSJ. Kinda! And so did OK Go! There is no reason why America's young people shouldn't be videotaping themselves doing the Charleston or humping ottomans or maybe some modified Oompa Loompa moves to "Waters Of Nazareth."

But Can You Dance To It? [WSJ]

Ok Go: Now Doing Just Slightly Better Than Ok

Brian Raftery — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 12:35:33 EDT

Everybody lost at last week's Video Music Awards: MTV lost. Mos Def lost. Even our nation's collective cultural masculinity (which wasn't doing so well to begin with) was handed another defeat. But the piss-poor show is at least partially responsible for the weekend-sales success of performer Ok Go, whose Oh No album—featuring the treadmill-assisted "Here It Goes Again" single—has finally cracked the upper-tier of the iTunes album chart (it's resting at No. 2, right between Dylan and Trousersnake; meanwhile, Amazon's album chart has at it at No. 62, a jump from last week).

If Oh No makes significant progress in tomorrow's SoundScan charts, expect plenty of music-biz wonks to extol the virtues of viral marketing, lauding the band for their brilliant, paradigm-shifting efforts. As they've proven, all you need to get a song on the charts these days are appearances on Letterman, The Today Show, The Colbert Report, The Early Show, ABC World News and the VMAs. So if you're in a young, cash-starved band, just go and do all that, and you'll be fine.

"OK Go - Here It Goes Again@VMA-06" [YouTube]

Is Ok Go Running In Place?

Brian Raftery — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 18:19:22 EDT

Thanks to their treadmill-hopping video "Here It Goes Again," Chicago's OK Go have had a pretty good summer: As of this posting, the "Again" clip has racked up nearly 3.5 million views on YouTube, leading to appearances on The Early Show and The Colbert Report, as well as a late-addition live slot at next week's VMAs. Considering that this is an above-average power-pop group without a Killers-sized marketing budget, they deserve whatever attention they can get (though if they follow it up with another goofy-dance video, we're going to have their goddamn legs broken).

That said, does anyone actually care about the song itself? A day afer the Colbert cameo, the so-so "Again" isn't even on the iTunes Top 100 songs list, which is surprising, given the tune's level of exposure (its highest iTunes placement is on the Alternative chart, where it's currently sitting at No. 23). Meanwhile, last fall's Oh No album has yet to break the 500,000-sales barrier, and is ranked at No. 106 on the Amazon.com sales charts—again, not bad, but considering how people have seen this thing, somewhat underwhelming. Hopefully things will pick up after next week's VMA and Good Morning America appearances; if they don't, Ok Go may be nothing more than another entry in the long line of music-video oddities, ranking somewhere between the puppets from "Invisible Touch" and the Blind Melon Bee Girl.

OK Go, "Here It Goes Again" [YouTube]