Twenty years on, OK Go are taking fans back to the video that changed everything. The band has teamed up with Vevo for a special edition of Footnotes, offering an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the making of their iconic hit, “Here It Goes Again.”
Packed with new insights, the feature reveals how the legendary treadmill video came together over just ten days, with 17 takes filmed in Damian Kulash’s sister’s backyard dance studio. What looked effortless on screen was anything but, with the band recalling the “mill burns” they earned from the second-hand gym equipment used throughout filming.
Perhaps the biggest surprise? Just how far the video travelled. As the band explains, “The stakes were relatively low – we were just having fun chasing a crazy idea.” At a time when the idea of content “going viral” was only just emerging, they never imagined the inventive one-take performance would become one of the internet’s defining music moments.
Now, two decades later, Vevo’s latest Footnotes gives fans the chance to rediscover the creativity, determination and happy accidents behind one of music video’s most unforgettable viral success stories.
Full Footnotes
OK Go: The whole process took ten days. The first four days we set up the treadmills and tried to figure out a vocabulary of moves to work with – basically trial and error.
The next four days we sequenced those moves into a sequential choreography. The last 2 days we just ran takes over and over until we got a good one.
Damian Kulash, Lead Singer: It was all recorded at my sister Trish Sie’s house in Orlando.
She’s an accomplished film director now, but back then she was a professional ballroom dancer, and we were working in the teaching studio behind her house.
The full crew was just the five of us – the four band members and her, with occasional help from her husband or a neighbor – and the vibe was super playful and fun.
Damian Kulash, Lead Singer: The take we used – I think it was take 17 – was the closest to perfect that we got.
And the one really noticeable mess up is when I stumble during the “Jamiroquai” spin.
That was sort of my signature move. That take is the only one where I biffed it, and it’s like a little stab in the heart.
But it’s the best overall take. And with some distance I recognize that the little mistakes are kind of the whole point, so I’ve forgiven myself.
OK Go: The real danger was in the center of the treadmill nest, where, if you slid off in the right place,
you could get caught with the belt of the treadmill behind you chewing you in the opposite
direction from the one you’re sliding off of.
There were a couple nasty rug burns – ‘mill burns? – from that.
Damian Kulash, Lead Singer: It was weird to find ourselves unexpectedly and unintentionally at the crest of a tidal wave crashing over pop culture.
I remember talking to record executives at the Grammys and the VMAs who were equal parts complimentary and terrified.
FACT CARD: The video was made for a few thousand dollars. “My sister’s husband Roe had found a second-hand gym equipment dealer who agreed to rent us the treadmills,” says Damian Kulash.
OK Go: We wanted to make something cool, of course, but we had no idea that YouTube would exist soon,
or that a homemade video like this could or would find any audience beyond our most diehard fans.
So the stakes were relatively low – we were just having fun chasing a crazy idea.
OK Go: The very concept of things going viral was just being born, so doing something genuinely clever and engaging in that mode was a different kind of shock than anything that could happen now.
It’s like comparing guitarists in the 50s and 60s using feedback and fuzz pedals for the first time to folks using the same ideas in music decades later.
No matter how virtuosic or creative Jack White is, we just can’t be surprised the same way our parents or grandparents were when Keith Richards or Jimi Hendrix used the same tricks.
