Whether you’ve seen the “Treadmill video,” checked out their latest single, “This Too Shall Pass” (over six-million YouTube views!), heard that they’ve left EMI Music, or maybe read Damien Kulash’s New York Times Op-ed, pop-rockers OK Go are currently being very Googled and/or Youtubed. Recently, I had a chance to ask bassist and vocalist Tim Nordwind a few questions about leaving the big, bad record label, fighting the good fight for bloggers who love their embed codes, and how the heck they come up with their video concepts!
Tim, thanks for being with us. So, now that you’re no longer with EMI, do you feel a huge burden lifted off your shoulders or what?
Tim Nordwind:
Ah, it’s interesting to not have your own independent label, you know? It’s been a day since we left our label so it’s a little bit hard to discuss how things are going. But this marks an extremely exciting time in our career, and really, the sky’s the limit at this point. It’s incredibly exciting, it’s incredibly liberating, and it kind of really couldn’t have happened at a better time. There’s a lot of exciting things happening in our world and it’s sort of great to see our new music video doing so well, and we’re about to do our North American tour. Also, we’re making another video at the end of March, so it’s exciting. It marks a new era for us and I’m looking forward to seeing what the future has in store for us.
I read the New York Magazine article where you said that you guys choose the song after settling on the concept for each video. Why is that?
TN:
Well, there’s no set rule, but it certainly has worked out like that, where we’ll have a concept that we really like a lot, and usually what we’ll end up doing is sitting down and sometimes we’ll do, say like, tests of the visual concepts and play all the songs to the tests and see what sort of interacts with the visual the best. It’s interesting how audio affects the visual and how the visual affects the audio. We’ll often find that sometimes the visual makes the fast song seem slow, strangely, or sometimes the visual makes a love song seem almost angry — it’s hard to know why. But then usually what ends up happening is that there will be one song that works very well with the visual and it sort of makes both the visual part and the audio part seem almost three-dimensional in a way. Like, “Whoa! The whole thing just pops!” and you’re like, “Yes! That’s it!” and all of the sudden you’re getting a burst of emotion, and that’s generally when we say, “Okay, that’s got to be in a song because it’s making us feel some kind of intense emotion,” whether it’s happiness or sadness, or whatever it is; if it’s making us feel something, then we generally try to go with it. But again, there are no real rules to it. I don’t know if someday we’ll write a song that will make us think of a visual or something like that, but that’s sort of how it’s worked so far.
We embed videos all the time on our online magazine blog and it’s incredibly annoying when you see that “Embedding Disabled,” text in the code section. Do you think all labels will follow suit to release the embed codes for the rest of their artists?
TN:
I mean, sure, yeah, I think labels should list the embedding codes and let their fans share everything with everyone; it just seems to make sense. It’s like, why do you want to censor where people can see your fans’ videos? I understand why they do it, but they certainly don’t make money selling records anymore, and some bands get millions and millions of hits on their videos, so of course they want to try to monetize that. And that makes sense to me, but I think what’s more important, especially from a band’s perspective, is that as many people hear your music and see your videos, you know? Unfortunately, what bands want and what labels want are sometimes different because the bands just often wants the exposure so that more people want to license their songs and come see them play live, and get a t-shirt or what not, but the labels don’t profit off any of that; they only profit off of you know, the sale of the song, the sale of the record, or the sale of the things they have the rights to, and so, generally the labels want slightly different things than the bands do a lot of the times. And of course, bands would love to sell millions and millions of records, but in this day and age where no one does that, or practically no one does that, you know, you start getting bigger and bigger discussions about what the bands want and what the labels want.
Yeah, definitely. It’s tough because everything’s digital these days too.
TN:
Well, that’s exactly it. But all in all, having the ability to embed videos is HUGE, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s necessary. That’s how people pass things around and share things with their friends, and so, if you don’t have that ability, it makes it really difficult.
You recently released a statement that you and EMI have officially parted ways, so does this mean more State Farm sponsored music videos?
TN:
I don’t know, I mean, we would certainly be willing to discuss that. They were really great sponsors in the sense that, they let us do whatever it is that we wanted to do, and they are sponsors and we did something creative, and they let us make a really great rock video. If they wanted to do more, we probably would be very interested in working with them again. It was a great way to get our video made; I think we’d certainly be open to doing that or working with other sponsors, or however it shakes down. It definitely was a good experience; it just kind of let us do our thing, and that was great.
What do you think it means that you were able to secure financing for your videos without the help of a big name record label?
TN:
We were just glad it [financing] came from somewhere, as far as getting sponsors for the video. It felt like this is how things are going in the modern age, and that this might be the way videos are getting made in the future, through sponsors instead of labels and things like that. And if that’s the case, for the most part, I feel alright about it. I’m sure there are some sponsors we’d rather not work with; I’m sure there’s some people’s money we wouldn’t take, just out of principle, but not because of business practices. State Farm seemed like an easy one, a no brainer; we were totally fine with the business practices and they seemed very excited about having us make this music video so it worked out well. I think it just sort of felt like, “Wow, this is how videos will be made in the future.”
You guys are visual artists and musicians, and props to you for always have control of publishing, merchandising, touring, and so on. Do you think that the changing music industry landscape will not only allow for more musicians and artists to allow their work to be seen but also financially support themselves? How so?
TN:
I mean, it’s strange. I think because of the internet, it’s now easier to find every single garage band in every single little town across America because people can have their own websites, put things on their MySpace, etc. In that respect, I feel like music is healthier than ever in the sense that you never have play a show ever and people will know who you are, and that’s great. I don’t think that speaks very much on people being able to make a career out of music or support themselves with it, but it does sort of speak to the fact that it is easier than ever to be creative and share things with people. I don’t know how every single music video is going to be made in the future; I can say that working with a sponsor was a great way to get this past video done, and I can see it working for future videos for us and working for other bands as well. But it’s hard to know. I don’t know what the labels are going to do in this new era of music distribution, so I really can’t tell you how it’s going to work, but I can suggest that the way we seemed to make our last video worked really well. I’d be happy to try to work more videos in that way.
What is the strangest video concept that you haven’t considered yet?
TN:
We actually have a fairly long list of video concepts that are kind of in the making at this point. We’re making another video at the end of March and then another one probably in the beginning of June. I can’t really give you specifics, but I can tell you they all sort of explore different aspects of choreography for the most part. This last video we did was sort of exploring choreography in specifics and I think we will continue to explore different aspects of choreography and sort of stretch the meaning of choreography. But I can assure you we actually have a decent list of videos that are coming up in the next year.
Cool, awesome! Alright, well that’s all the questions I have. Thank you for speaking with us today!
TN:
Thanks a lot!
And for your viewing and listening pleasure, please find below their video for “This Too Shall Pass.”
Special thanks to Allie Wester/Helen Wei of Fanscape!
