85. The value of taking the hard road
The secret behind viral videos.
suggested reading method
To best savour this artwork, please take a moment to eliminate distractions. Consider minimizing all other windows on your computer; putting other devices (phone, tv etc) aside; taking a deep breath, to the full extent of your lung capacity; and focusing solely on the “artwork” section.
Once you’ve processed that to your satisfaction, the rest of the post is optional reading, provided only to share my own impressions and reasons for choosing this piece.
artwork
“A Stone Only Rolls Downhill” by OK Go, from their forthcoming 2025 album And the Adjacent Possible.
interpretation
A criticism of modern art is often “I could have done that.” The response is, “well, you didn’t” – implying that the artist was the one to realize the obvious, even if that didn’t seem to require much skill.
Well, this is the opposite. This took a ton of skill, and I can’t even fathom how it was done.
OK Go has a solid track record of making dependable pop-rock set apart by imaginative music videos. The last I heard of them was in my high school years, when they were still riding the high of “Here It Goes Again.” Now OK Go has made a surprise, triumphant return with “A Stone Only Rolls Downhill,” which captivated me from start to finish. There is a behind-the-scenes video here, explaining that this was created with 577 hours of planning, 64 iPhones, and 1,043 takes over 8 days.
The theme of the lyrics is hopelessness, when “the arc” of history seems to be bending in the wrong direction. Damian Kulash and co. repeatedly sing of wishing they could just say things will be fine, with the implication that they can’t.
Still, the act of creating this music video is the greatest argument for hope that I could imagine. All the recording was done manually: a rare display of human effort in our age of automated AI. Since this video is all one take, there were no shortcuts for thinking every aspect through to its conclusion.
I believe this is a secret to OK Go’s consistently viral content. People can’t think “I could have done that,” because the sheer amount of creativity is new, fresh, and plainly delightful.
While the stone may roll downhill, OK Go pushes their art back up the mountain, and shows us the value of doing things the hard way.
context
OK Go is an American pop-rock band from Chicago. Active since 1998, they first made a breakthrough with their 2005 music video for “A Million Ways” from their second album Oh No. To date, OK Go has released four albums, and 26 viral videos. They remain active on their YouTube channel.
Feel free to share your own thoughts in the comments!