By the time Hungry Ghosts dropped in 2014, OK Go were ten years past the treadmill video that made them unavoidable. Damian Kulash knew the world saw them as “that band with the videos,” but he didn’t mind. Not anymore. “There was a moment where we had to decide if we were going to run from it or lean in,” he told me. “Turns out, it wasn’t a stunt. It’s who we are.”
What he meant was: they like puzzles. Video puzzles, song puzzles, pop structure puzzles — that’s what makes OK Go tick. “The distinction between songwriting and making a video is arbitrary,” he said. “You're playing with sound or visuals, looking for that alchemical moment where it becomes emotional. That’s the thrill.”
So no, they didn’t disappear for four years because they were trapped in a hamster wheel of viral marketing. Kulash moved to New York. Broke up with his wife. Moved back to LA. Produced a Lavender Diamond record he still gushes over. And spent six months making the absurd car-door-percussion video for “Needing/Getting.”
But Hungry Ghosts was more than just an OK Go album with a cooler budget. It was them finally saying: pop is not a dirty word. “We’re children of the ’80s,” Kulash said. “You’ll hear New Order and Prince in here, sure — but I’m not trying to cosplay. I’m chasing the same feeling those songs gave me. That joy.”
“Turn Down For What,” he added, without irony, “is one of the greatest songs ever written.”
What’s weird is how prophetic the record became. “The Writing’s on the Wall” — a song Kulash originally wrote from bassist Tim Nordwind’s perspective about his breakup — turned out to be a mirror. “Two months later, my wife walked out,” Kulash said. “I looked at my own lyrics and went… how did I not see this coming?”
They called the album Hungry Ghosts — named for the Buddhist concept of desire as bottomless — and then made a record that danced in the space between loneliness and euphoria. “This isn’t EDM, it’s not guitar rock, it’s not a throwback,” Kulash said. “It’s pop, but it’s our version of it. We’re not chasing the charts — we’re chasing something chemical.”
And if it sounds like a left turn, well… so did the last record. “Every OK Go album is different from the one before it,” he said. “That used to terrify us. Now it’s the only thing we know how to do.”
Still not Metallica, and proudly so. “We’re not trapped by our brand. The four of us still like each other. We’re still here. And maybe that’s the bigger trick.”
Watch the interview above and then check out the video below.
