Or, why OK Go is more than just a group that makes awesome music videos.
Yeah, anybody who knows OK Go most likely knows them for they're utterly amazing music videos. I mean, when I eventually do my best music videos list, it will be a damn near impossible task to select one of their videos, and you can damn sure it will be top five. However, that is not the point of this review, I want to showcase why they are more than just guys who make amazing music videos, and are also good musicians.
Picking one of their songs was itself a challenge, I could've gone with "Here it Goes Again" as that was the video that got them famous. I could have picked "This Too Shall Pass", and I even thought about doing "Needing/Getting", but then there was this song, which was attached to one of the best music videos I've ever seen, and I thought that the video might be overshadowing the song.
So, I think the first thing I should say is that, the instrumentals are a weird techno-rock kind of style. I'm not talking about Daft Punk's Human After All where they included more rock elements, this is something entirely different and quite honestly, I like it. The opening instrumentals are very energetic and upbeat which is an immediate hook to any good song, really if you are bad at making an impression with your opening, or you completely change styles from your opening your song won't really go far, and this opening makes a nice impression.
The instrumentals do shift into a less energetic sound at some points in the song, but it's welcomed because the instrumentals themselves are always loud and upbeat. I think this is a good song to highlight something I don't like about a lot of songs, when they mistake being loud and obnoxious for being loud and upbeat. "Call on Me" had this very same issue, so what is the main difference? Something that is loud and obnoxious is just that, annoying and sometimes painful, and even though some upbeat songs can be annoying, it's never to the point where it physically hurts to listen to a song, "Call on Me" gives me a headache after just thirty seconds, "Mr. Blobby" and "Bananaphone" were both just annoying, with the latter song also being repetitive, and "Hello Kitty" was actually very close to giving me a headache with it's dubstep wub-noxious beat that took over the whole song.
"Upside Down & Inside Out" does not have either of those problems, even though, in some cases, it really should. Why does this song not give me a headache? Maybe because it doesn't sound like a drill going through my head nor like the song is causing my brain to vibrate uncomfortably. Why is this song not annoying? because, unlike "Mr. Blobby" or "Starships" when it does shift it's tempo and tone, it doesn't come out of nowhere and is actually a very welcomed change, the other two songs almost randomly switched into a completely different genre which makes it harder to really attach myself to those songs. Then we have the harder question to answer, why is this song not repetitive? Well, I think it is because, although the chorus is repeated a lot, each one is usually different from the last, take the ending part as an example, it begins slowly and then ends like any good upbeat song should, with a bang! Whereas in a song like "Bananaphone" the only change we got was changing a couple letters in the verse, which lost it's charm quickly.
I'd also like to talk about the lyrics, but I can't really find anything about this song. Wikipedia only has information about the music video, you know how I said the video was overshadowing the song? So, I'm going to give you what I think the song is, and honestly, it's not very easy to decide. A part of me thinks it's a break up song, maybe it's about making a personal change, maybe it's about being confused, or maybe it's about nothing at all. I don't really have much of a starting point to jump off from here. Although despite this, I do like some of the lyrics, especially this verse: "So when you met the new you/Were you scared?/Were you cold?/Were you kind?/Yeah when you met the new you/Did someone die inside?"
I wouldn't say this is my favourite OK Go song, it does lack some of the lyrical quality of a song like "Skyscrapers" or "The Writing's on the Wall", but I would say it's up there. It does a lot of things that usually annoy me in music, but in this case it actually does them correctly and not as badly as the songs I cover on the other part of my blog. I know that in the end OK Go is going to be known for their amazing music videos, but once the novelty of those fade, it's nice to know we're going to have good songs to go with them.
I'm the Entity of Darkness, and next time is another look at the pop punk scene... hooray...
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