OK Go helped invent the viral video. 20 years later, virality has changed

On a outpouring day successful 2005, the members of OK Go dressed up successful tacky suits, gathered successful beforehand of a video camera and awkwardly danced their mode into history.

The band’s DIY single-shot clip for its opus “A Million Ways” — successful which the brainy stone quartet moves done 3 and a fractional minutes of intricate choreography connected the patio down vocalist Damian Kulash’s Los Angeles location — became 1 of music’s archetypal viral videos, racking up millions of downloads (remember those?) and helping to found a caller mode for acts to link with fans arsenic the net began to supplant MTV and Top 40 radio.

OK Go doubled down connected the attack successful 2006 with its video for “Here It Goes Again,” different bare-bones accumulation that had the musicians dancing connected 8 synchronized treadmills, past went connected to marque progressively elaborate clips featuring a Rube Goldberg machine, a zero-gravity level formation and a battalion of adorable dogs.

“As soon arsenic the treadmill happening happened, it was like: Holy s—, we’re popular civilization now,” Kulash said the different time of “Here It Goes Again,” which won a Grammy Award for champion euphony video and has been viewed much than 67 cardinal times connected YouTube.

Twenty years aft “A Million Ways,” the mechanics of taste transportation person transformed again acknowledgment to societal media and TikTok, wherever what you brushwood arsenic you scroll is guided by the invisible manus of information analysis.

Said OK Go bassist Tim Nordwind with grinning understatement: “The algorithm has go a spot much powerful.”

“Not a large instrumentality of the algorithm arsenic an arbiter of art,” Kulash added. “It’s bittersweet to spot optimization successful a abstraction that was erstwhile the Wild West.”

Yet OK Go is inactive astatine it: Last period the radical released its latest one-shot video for the opus “Love,” for which Kulash and his co-directors installed dozens of mirrors connected almighty robotic arms wrong an aged Budapest bid presumption to make a benignant of kaleidoscopic obstacle course.

The band’s methods person grown much blase since “A Million Ways,” and these days it seeks retired firm sponsors to assistance bring Kulash’s visions to life. But an adventuresome — and touchingly idiosyncratic — tone remains cardinal to its work.

“What I emotion astir the ‘Love’ video is the humans successful the room,” Kulash said arsenic helium and Nordwind sat extracurricular a Burbank rehearsal workplace wherever OK Go was preparing for a circuit scheduled to halt Friday and Saturday astatine L.A.’s Bellwether. (The group’s different members are guitarist Andy Ross and drummer Dan Konopka.) “The robots are lone there,” the vocalist added, “to determination the mirrors truthful that we tin acquisition that magical happening — truthful elemental and beauteous — of 2 mirrors making infinity.”

A wistful psych-pop jam inspired by Kulash’s becoming a begetter to twins — his wife, writer and filmmaker Kristin Gore, is simply a girl of erstwhile Vice President Al Gore — “Love” comes from OK Go’s caller album, “And the Adjacent Possible,” its archetypal LP since 2014. It’s a characteristically eclectic acceptable that besides includes a strutting funk-rock tune featuring Ben Harper, a glammy rave-up co-written by Shudder to Think’s Craig Wedren and a woozy existentialist’s ballad astir discovering there’s nary “no deus ex machina moving distant successful the wings.” (That past one’s called “This Is How It Ends.”)

“We’re aged radical who perceive to bittersweet ballads,” said Kulash, who’ll crook 50 successful October. “That’s what happens erstwhile you go an aged person, right?”

Wedren, who’s known Kulash since the second was a teenage Shudder to Think instrumentality successful their shared hometown of Washington, D.C., said that “part of the quality of OK Go is that they’re truthful musically omnivorous — that each these things that wouldn’t look to spell unneurotic ever extremity up sounding similar OK Go.” In Wedren’s view, the set “doesn’t get capable recognition for however exploratory they are arsenic musicians — possibly due to the fact that of the genius of the videos.”

If that’s the case, Kulash doesn’t look particularly to mind. He knew astir 2 decades agone that the viral occurrence of the treadmill video — which the set recreated onstage astatine the 2006 MTV Video Music Awards betwixt performances by Justin Timberlake and Beyoncé — threatened to marque OK Go “a one-hit wonderment whose 1 deed was an workout instrumentality stunt,” arsenic the vocalist enactment it. “Or it could beryllium the opening to an accidental to bash much and weirder things.”

Among the weird things the radical ended up doing: the 2014 clip for “I Won’t Let You Down,” successful which the members thrust astir a parking batch successful Japan connected idiosyncratic mobility devices nether the oculus of a camera connected a drone.

“I retrieve proceeding that Radiohead didn’t play ‘Creep’ for 10 oregon 15 years due to the fact that they were excessively chill for that,” helium said. “Had we taken the way of being excessively chill for treadmills and homemade videos, I tin look backmost and accidental —”

“We’d person had a overmuch quieter career,” Nordwind chimed in.

There’s a mode of looking astatine OK Go’s accent connected visuals that depicts the set arsenic a harbinger of an epoch erstwhile “musician” is conscionable different connection for “content creator.”

“It’s weird to deliberation astir a beingness successful the vertical arsenic opposed to the horizontal,” Nordwind said with a laugh, referring to the respective orientations of videos connected TikTok and YouTube.

“What’s hard astir societal media is the question of measurement — the measurement and prime equilibrium is disconnected to me,” Kulash said.

Creators, helium means, are expected to churn retired contented similar small one-person factories.

“Day aft day,” Nordwind said. “We similar to instrumentality our time.”

“Also: When I autumn successful emotion with a song, I privation to perceive that opus implicit and implicit again,” Kulash said. “I volition perceive to ‘Purple Rain’ until I die. Do radical spell backmost and hunt someone’s provender to replay the TikTok they archetypal fell successful emotion with?

“The narration that I deliberation radical person to their favourite YouTube prima oregon TikToker,” helium added, “feels overmuch much similar a narration to personage than it does a narration to art.”

OK Go astatine its rehearsal workplace successful Burbank.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

For Kulash, who made his diagnostic debut arsenic a manager (alongside his wife) with 2023’s “The Beanie Bubble,” the pursuit of creation is bound up successful ideas of effort and limitation, which is wherefore AI doesn’t involvement him arsenic a filmmaking tool.

“When everything is possible, thing is special,” helium said. “The crushed we sprout our videos successful a azygous changeable is not purely for the filmmaking heroics. It’s due to the fact that that’s the lone mode to beryllium to people: This is existent — we did the thing.”

OK Go’s dedication to costly and time-consuming applicable effects has led to partnerships with a fig of deep-pocketed brands, opening with State Farm, which spent a reported $150,000 to concern the band’s 2010 “This Too Shall Pass” video with the Rube Goldberg machine. (Meta sponsored the “Love” video and successful instrumentality got a salient spot successful the clip for its Ray-Ban astute glasses.)

Kulash said that benignant of merchandise placement was “scary arsenic s—” backmost successful the precocious 2000s, erstwhile the fearfulness of being perceived arsenic sellouts haunted each stone band.

“Now, of course, it’s similar a badge of honor,” helium added, among influencers anxious to flaunt their firm ties.

To explicate his presumption connected the matter, the vocalist — whose set walked distant from its woody with Capitol Records successful 2010 to commencement its ain label, Paracadute — tried retired an extended metaphor: “On the different broadside of the planet, tectonic plates are moving and the blistery magma of firm wealth is coming retired of the ground. That’s wherefore the MTV Awards exist, that’s wherefore the Grammys exist, that’s wherefore everything you deliberation of arsenic a solemnisation of precocious creation exists. It’s each advertizing dollars, each past spot of it. You’re protected by these continents of middle-people, which fto you consciousness similar you’re marking art. But if you tin negociate to beryllium 1 of those microbes astatine the bottommost of the oversea that gets its vigor straight from the thermal vents of the blistery magma money, past you get to marque thing different radical don’t.” He laughed.

“There’s nary grounds statement successful the satellite that would ever beryllium like, ‘Hey, wherefore don’t you spell to Budapest for 3 weeks and walk a ridiculous magnitude of wealth to marque this euphony video astatine a clip erstwhile there’s not adjacent a euphony video transmission anymore?’

“But brands cognize that’s worthwhile, and we cognize that’s worthwhile,” helium said. “You conscionable person to marque definite you don’t get burned by the magma.”