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⇱ OK Go (Music) - TV Tropes

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Music / OK Go

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Left to right: Tim Nordwind, Andy Ross, Damian Kulash, Dan Konopka. Not pictured: Andy Duncan.
OK Go is an Alternative Rock/Power Pop band. Originally from Chicago, Illinois and currently based in Los Angeles, California, the band formed in 1998 and have gone from being an also-ran in the early 2000s "Return of Rock" that also spawned The Strokes and The White Stripes to being internationally famous, which many accredit to their inventive music videos which are often complex, shot in one take and made on a low budget.

Their most recognized song is "Here It Goes Again", whose music video contains the four band members performing a choreographed dance over several sets of treadmills. The video won a Grammy Award, became one of the biggest viral sensations of the early age of YouTube, and has its own page. The band's videos have since featured premises like playing a song with a giant Rube Goldberg machine ("This Too Shall Pass"), playing a song by driving a Chevrolet Sonic fitted with extensions through a rally car course lined with musical instruments ("Needing/Getting"), setting up an elaborate series of optical illusions ("The Writing's on the Wall"), performing a song in zero gravity on an airplane in flight ("Upside Down & Inside Out"), and performing a song in 4.2 real-time seconds that were then slowed down to reveal over 300 distinct events synchronized with the song ("The One Moment").

The band's albums are:

  • OK Go (2002)
  • Oh No (2005)
  • Of the Blue Colour of the Sky (2010)
  • Hungry Ghosts (2014)
  • And the Adjacent Possible (2025)

Their videos include:

This band provides examples of the following tropes

  • All Just a Dream: The Muppet Show Theme video is shown to be all just Damian Kulash's nightmare, which was inside of Dr. Teeth's nightmare, which was inside of Tim Nordwind's nightmare.
  • Alternate Music Video:
    • "Do What You Want" had a video consisting in tour footage before they released "Version 2 (Wallpaper Background)", which has them and other people singing and dancing while they and their props are all completely covered in the same pattern as the background (and has nearly 5 times as many views).
    • "This Too Shall Pass" has a music video where the members perform live as part of a marching band, and another, released months later, featuring an extremely elaborate Rube Goldberg Device synced with the song.
  • Anti-Love Song:
    • So Damn Hot. Though it's not in the "love hurts" vein and more in the "she strings me along, and toys with my emotions, but I'm ok with it because she's sexy" variety. Like a less emotionally wrecked version of Miserable.
    • The Writing's On The Wall is somewhere between this and a normal Break-Up Song, addressed from the singer to their lover about how their chemistry has fallen apart, and they want to have one last good time together before separating.
  • Bedmate Reveal: The video👁 Image
    for the remake of The Muppet Show's theme song has three nested bedmate reveals. Each one has a different OK Go band member/Muppet waking up convinced they shouldn't do that music video with the Muppets/OK Go/those dogs👁 Image
    .
  • Blatant Lies: In "Oh Lately It's So Quiet" there's a lyric "I don't think much about you anymore"... even though the entire song is him wondering what his ex is up to.
  • Break-Up Song: "The Writing's On the Wall" is about a couple where the love went out of their relationship because they just don't see eye-to-eye. The video is full of optical illusions, and in the middle is the text: "I think I understand you but I don't."
  • Busby Berkeley Number: Done with Japanese Schoolgirls and Honda UNI-CUBs (think sit-down Segways) in the video for "I Won't Let You Down".
  • Call-Back: One of the sample messages for their interactive video for "All Is Not Lost"👁 Image
    is "Let it go, this too shall pass."👁 Image
    • The "Muppet Show" video features brief call-backs to the videos for "Here It Goes Again", "All Is Not Lost", "This Too Shall Pass", and "White Knuckles", with each one being somehow interrupted by the Muppets.
  • The Cameo: Japanese girl group Perfume appear in the preamble of the "I Won't Let You Down" video.
  • Catapult Nightmare: The end of the "Muppet Show" video, no less than three times, each with a different twist.
  • Changed for the Video: The video for "Needing/Getting" chose to forego the standard rock four-piece version of the song for the video, by arranging the song to be performed by a rally car. The car was outfitted with a number of rods, designed to hit pianos, pipes and guitars lined up on the sides of the track.
  • Color-Coded Characters:
    • "End Love":
      • Tim: pink
      • Damian: yellow
      • Andy: red
      • Dan: blue
    • "This Too Shall Pass" and "Needing/Getting":
      • Tim: red
      • Damian: blue
      • Dan: green
      • Andy: yellow
    • "Upside Down & Inside Out":
      • Tim: pink
      • Damian: blue
      • Andy: red
      • Dan: green
    • The booklet for Of The Blue Color Of The Sky. Each track represents a different color in the various graphs.
    • Their whole video for👁 Image
      Sesame Street. Well it is meant to be teaching kids about the Three Primary Colors.
    • Andy tends to be dressed in red.
  • Common Meter: "Upside Down & Inside Out" brings to mind Megadeth's "Sweating Bullets" with these two lines matching:
    Upside Down and Inside Out: Don't know where your eyes are / but they're not doin' what you said / Don't know where your mind is baby / but you're better off without it.
    Sweating Bullets: I'm in trouble for the things / I haven't got to yet / I'm chomping at the bit and my / Palms are getting wet
  • Creator In-Joke: The band's name - Tim and Damien first met at an art camp when they were 11, where they had an eccentric art teacher who basically had "OK, go!" as his catchphrase.
  • Depth Deception: The video for "The Writing's On the Wall" is full of them, including the title written out twice, and a bunch of random objects suspended in air which looked like Tim when viewed from above.
  • Dream Within a Dream: The ending of The Muppet Show Theme video, which is shown to be Damian Kulash's nightmare, which was inside of Dr. Teeth's nightmare, which was inside of Tim Nordwind's nightmare.
  • Droste Image:
    • The concept behind the "A Stone Only Rolls Downhill" video is that it's spread across 64 different smaller one-shot videos across 64 smartphones, which are all arranged and choreographed to coordinate among each other in side-by-side grid formation, as well as within each other, as cameras zoom out to reveal you're looking at a phone in another formation of videos multiple times.
    • The video for "Love" involves many different tricks with mirrors being arranged and choreographed by robots, resulting in Hall of Mirrors-like scenarios that evoke this.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness:
    • The band started out attempting to project a tough image by wearing black clothes with chains and studded accessories. This didn't last too long as the members settled into their shabby chic look.
    • Several early music videos began with a title card describing what occurs in them, such as "Here It Goes Again" note "OK GO, ON TREADMILLS", "A Million Ways" note "OK GO in the backyard, dancing", and "White Knuckles"note "OK GO, WITH FRIENDS" .
  • Ending with a Scream: Befitting an ode to lust, the song "You're So Damn Hot" builds up speed and intensity until the song ends on the singer releasing it all in one abrupt but intense scream that acts as a Sudden Soundtrack Stop.
  • Everything Is an Instrument: Toyed with briefly in the second video for "This Too Shall Pass", but taken up to eleven in the video for "Needing/Getting", in which the song is played by a car driving on a rally course, with various appendages attached to strike different instruments and objects as it passes by.
  • Everything's Precious with Puppies: The video for "White Knuckles" features an entire crew of dogs of different breeds. Aside from the single line "You'll never get the pawprint out of the henhouse now," the song has nothing to do with dogs.
  • Flashmob: The last visual gag of "The Writing's on the Wall" shows the crew stopping and standing in the apparently-entirely-empty warehouse they were filming in, with the song's title written out in Depth Deception writing behind the band, over the walls, ceiling, and support pillars. Then, Damian announces the end of the cut; cue an entire studio's worth of people stepping out from behind the painted-over support pillars, making it seem as if they're appearing from thin air.
  • Hall of Mirrors: "Love" takes the concept to the nth degree, where the band walks through a hallway of a Budapest train station lined with mirrors held by robots and human crew members, choreographed to result in dazzling, psychedelic imagery. The climax features Damian entering an enclosed space of mirrors while himself wearing a suit completely studded with mirrors.
  • Hidden Track: "9027 KM", an unlisted track at the end of the US version of Oh No, consists of 35 minutes of the sounds of Damian's girlfriend sleeping.
  • Hope Springs Eternal: Ambiguously subverted in "A Stone Only Rolls Downhill": it sounds like a calming, yet upbeat indie pop jam referring to platitudes of a stone rolling towards "the arc" (a phrase coined by Martin Luther King Jr., originally meant as optimistic in the inevitability of justice), but the rest of the song puts a bittersweet cynicism to it, spinning how it only rolls downhill. The fact the chorus repeats the lines of "I wish I could say it would all be all right / I wish I could tell you it would all be fine" reads as far less reassuring and hopeful than it actually sounds.
  • Mind Screw: The music video for "The Writing's On the Wall", centered around optical illusions and trickery. The music videos for "WTF" and "Love" also invoke this.
  • Mythology Gag: In their video for the cover of The Muppet Show's theme song, they have Animal holding up Dan👁 Image
    during the sequence where the Muppets are using the band like puppets.
    • It also has a shot of the band on treadmills, though not lined up in the same setup as "Here it Goes Again". Also Damian smooshing his face on glass while wearing a sea-foam green bodysuit in and the the bit with the Swedish Chef and tower of Dixie cups play homage to the video's for "All is Not Lost" and the second "This Too Shall Pass".
    • The ending makes a reference to "White Knuckles," since Tim wakes from a Catapult Nightmare saying "We can't do that video with those dogs." They also have a "one of these things is not like the other" moment with a sheep in the bed along with the dogs (in the actual White Knuckles video, one of the members tries to walk a goat across the scene while the dogs were running everywhere).
  • New Sound Album: Of The Blue Colour of The Sky is a lot more electronic, psychedelic and down-tempo than their previous sound, while Hungry Ghosts has an obvious influence from electropop and disco.
  • "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer:
    • "Upside Down & Inside Out" begins with a disclaimer that what the viewer is about to see is real, as it's shot in a plane in the air, using aerial techniques to send the interior of the plane into zero gravity. The disclaimer also says that the video contains no wires or green screen effects.
    • "Obsession" has one as well, stating that everything in the video is real, achieved with "1 band, 567 printers, and a lot of paper".
    • "The One Moment" opens with one stating that the entire music video really is four seconds slowed down.
  • The Oner: They're masters at this technique, as showcased in their music videos for "A Million Ways", "Here It Goes Again", "WTF?", both versions of "This Too Shall Pass"note The second, more famous video does feature two post-production cuts to help the video sync up to the song, but the contraption was really run all the way through on the take used., "End Love"note An 18 hour take sped up, slowed down, and heavily edited to resemble stop-motion, "White Knuckles", "The Writing's On the Wall", "I Won't Let You Down", "Upside Down and Inside Out"note Filmed all the way through in a single take, however, the resulting video has a number of "Stop Trick" edits where the band had to sit perfectly still while waiting for the next "zero-G parabola" to begin., and "The One Moment"note Due to the lack of a robot-mounted camera that could record it all in one take, it had to be split into parts and edited together.
  • Overcrank:
    • The video for "The One Moment" is three and a half minutes long, but most of it takes place over 4.2 seconds of real-time.
    • "Do What You Want" mixes this with Undercrank from shot to shot. The breakdancer shot is the most obvious example of Overcrank.
  • Practical Effects: Their second specialty after The Oner, using real-world objects to provide the special effects. Unlike most uses of this trope, it's not to provide a realistic-looking scene, but to produce a distinct and unique image.
    • "Obsession" uses a giant wall of printers to simulate a greenscreen, with each printer producing a part of a larger image.
    • "I Won't Let You Down" uses colored parasols at the end to replicate the image of five single-color LED screens.
    • "Last Leaf" is an animation done with pieces of toast as a medium.
    • "The Writing's On The Wall" uses a ton of Forced Perspective to replicate abstract images usually expected as post-processing. This is best exemplified with the first scene with the band members in it, where it appears that the song's title has been overlaid onto the still shot, until the group starts moving around the foreground objects and carrying the title's letters with them.
    • "This" is achieved via pouring/squirting various paints onto a spin art disk.
    • "Upside Down and Inside Out" uses a plethora of bouncy balls and paint-filled balloons that get popped during the finale sequence. 👁 This example contains a TRIVIA entry. It should be moved to the TRIVIA tab.
      Word of God is that these effects were deliberate to emphasize that no digital or wire work was being used in the shots to achieve the weightlessness (Digital stitching was used to cut out the periods in between 0 gravity sequences however).
  • Precision F-Strike:
    • "Don't Ask Me" contains the only one on their self-titled debut.
      Don't be so damn benign
      And don't waste my fucking time
    • There's also a Precision B-Strike in "Get Over It", in the line "Ain't it just a bitch?"
    • Rather predictably, there's also one in "WTF?"
  • Product Placement: Many of the inventive music videos that have made the group famous were underwritten by different sponsors, such as Chevrolet sponsoring "Needing/Getting" and Morton Salt funding "The One Moment". Since the sponsors tend to be hands off and just let OK Go do their thing, this is arguably one of the more positive examples of the trope.
  • Ridiculously Cute Critter: Bunny, Damian's dog, who has been featured in their videos, "White Knuckles" and "The Muppet Show Theme Song" and is Surprised Dog👁 Image
    on YouTube.
  • Rube Goldberg Device: In their "This Too Shall Pass" music video.
  • Self-Deprecation: Their acceptance speech for the Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award👁 Image
    .
  • Step Up to the Microphone: Tim Nordwind sings lead on "C-C-C-Cinnamon Lips".
    • In a sort of variation of this, Tim does the lip syncing for some of their videos instead of Damian, including "Here It Goes Again" and "White Knuckles".
  • Stuff Blowing Up: "Invincible" features many things, from beds to water coolers to a jar of olives being blown up.
  • Two-Faced: One of the illusions in "The Writing's On The Wall" involves Tim wearing a hat with a two-sided mirror splitting his head in two. On one side, he looks normal, on the other he's clean-shaven and has a wild wig. The mirror makes it seem like both sides of his face are the same.
  • Uncommon Time: "WTF?" is in 5/4.
  • Undercrank:
    • Almost the entirety of the video for "End Love", with a few bits of Overcrank for contrast.
    • "Do What You Want", specifically its wallpaper version, is filmed at very conspicuous levels of undercrank and overcrank in various shots. Most notably the person pushing the chair towards the edge of frame and then dancing, which features very clear skipping and jittery movement by the dancer.
    • "I Won't Let You Down" was filmed at half speed to make the complex choreography a little easier to follow.
    • "Upside Down and Inside Out" was filmed at approximately 78% speed to get the choreography to match the lengths of the "zero-G parabolas" the plane had to fly in while the video was filmed.

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