The Long-Awaited Return Of OK Go, Which Begs The Nagging Question ...

The fine folks at OK Go have released their first song from their new album, Hungry Ghosts, which is due for release in October.  The song, aptly titled "The Writing's On The Wall", comes to us wrapped in a delicious video featuring the band's four members ensconced in a seemingly endless array of ambitious, multi-faceted and ridiculously clever tricks of the eye that overwhelms the senses to such an extent that our ears barely have time to notice the song that's playing.

As of this morning (June 18), the video has already logged over 1 million views on YouTube, which deems it a success as far as YouTube videos go, but unless the band has more visually-addictive tricks up their sleeve, whatever momentum created by the release of this video nearly three months in advance of the album will be lost.

Of course,  one cannot help wonder if that even matters to the band at this point.  Since leaving Capitol Records in 2010, the band has done some low-profile vault clearing (a live album, remixes, etc.), but the real money has come from filming commercials for the likes of State Farm Insurance, Chevrolet, Range Rover, Cisco, Jose Cuervo, and Google Chrome, among others.



In other words, OK Go seem to be the hottest ad agency in all of rock & roll, which is a great gig if you can get it, but, at the end of the day, I have to ask...what does any of this have to do with music?
After all, despite a reported 50 million views of "Here It Goes Again (aka The Treadmill Video)", the single peaked at #38 on the charts and remains the only OK Go single to actually chart.  So the answer to the question "Do YouTube clicks lead to real-world sales?" is a resounding no.

Of course, OK Go are smart enough to recognize this, which is why they've chosen to accept millions of dollars from deep-pocketed companies like Range Rover and Google to indulge their visual side without having to worry about "the songs".

While I personally find that to be counterproductive to a rock band's survival, the state of the music industry these days has forced thousands of rock bands to get creative in order to reach their audience and, in that respect, nobody does it better than OK Go.