POPSCREEN: OK Go - "Do What You Want"

For OK Go, the goal is to entertain. Whether or not their form of fun-making is based more in music than in comedy has never been a matter of concern for the geek-punk quartet. The video for their most popular song to date, “Here We Go Again,” is the model of this philosophy. With the kinetic energy of a sports car commercial—see catchy hook, driving beat, impressively syncopated multi-treadmill dance routine—it earned the boys a reputation as innovative video auteurs.

The music video for their newest single, “Do What You Want,” is more of the same in many ways, and a great departure in others. It goes without saying that the antics that made the band famous remain a constant. Greater exposure—and the increased budget that have surely accompanied such fame—has forced a marked departure from the do-it-yourself ethos of OK Go’s former videos.

The clip is overly reliant on the rather uninteresting idea of dressing people in full-body suits cut from the same pattern as the set’s wallpaper and flooring. The one-note nature of the video soon shifts from boring to irritating; first the band wears the suits, then dancers, then acrobats, then dancers, and then the band again. Enough!

Gone is the sports car “vroom” of yore. “Do What You Want” begins engagingly but quickly runs out of gas.

The fun of a good OK Go music video is that that the visuals and the music work toward the same goal. “Do What You Want” shows OK Go at their most unharmonious yet. Who unplugged their treadmills?

—Ruben L. Davis