Today, OK Go shared their first new music of 2023, the joyous single “This.” The GRAMMY®-winning band created the song for the Apple Original Film “The Beanie Bubble.”Stream “This” HERE and listen for it during the film’s end credits. In select theaters today – and available globally on Apple TV+ on July 28 – the film starsZach Galifianakis, Elizabeth Banks, Sarah Snook and Geraldine Viswanathan.
From the married directing duo Kristin Gore (“Her,” “Foxcatcher”) and Damian Kulash, Jr. (lead singer of OK Go), and written by Gore, comes the wild and unlikely story of the team responsible forBeanie Babies. “The Beanie Bubble” follows Ty Warner, who was a frustrated toy salesman until his collaboration with three women grew his masterstroke of an idea into the biggest toy craze in history. It’s an inventive tale about what and who we value, and the unsung heroes whose names didn’t appear on the heart-shaped tag.
“‘This’ is about the unexpected places we find fulfillment. It’s about how heaven is the glow in margins around the everyday patterns of family life. It’s the victorious anthem we needed for the closing moments of our film,” says Damian Kulash, Jr. “After almost two hours of a musical journey through twentieth century pop music (which is like the most satisfying mix tape of all time, for me personally), we needed the final beat of the film to bring viewers back to the present day. Our fable about theAmerican Dream is over, and as the lights come up we want you sinking into that bittersweet-victory flavor of nostalgia. That’s the feeling we want you to leave the theater with.”
Following the film’s July 17th advance screening at The92nd St Y in New York City, Ira Glass (“This American Life”) led a discussion with the directors and the cast. “The Beanie Bubble” is produced by Imagine Entertainment’s Brian Grazer, Ron Howard and Karen Lunder and executive produced by Galifianakis and Douglas S. Jones. Gore and Kulash’s spoke at length about the film with The Guardian. Read the interview here.
With a career that includes award-winning videos, New York Times op-eds and an experiment that encoded their music on actual strands of DNA, OK Go continue to fearlessly dream and build new worlds in a time when creative boundaries have all but dissolved. So it’s no wonder that the band would apply its inventiveness to the creation of a spin art cover for “This.” View the visualizer HERE.
Fans can rest assured that “This” is just the beginning of a new era for OK Go, with additional music to be unveiled later this year. An adventurous spirit of collaboration has always fueled OK Go – whether teaming up with scientists from Syyn Labs (“This Too Shall Pass,” recently remixed for the end credits of “The Flash”), modern dance company Pilobolus (“All Is Not Lost”), Russia’s space training program (“Upside Down& Inside Out”), the University of St. Thomas’ Playful Learning Lab and thousands of contributors from around the globe (“All Together Now”) and VR visionary Chris Milk (the VR experience “Lambchild Superstar”). The band has been recognized for their achievements with 21 Cannes Lions, 12 CLIOs, 3 VMAs, 2 Webbys, The Smithsonian Ingenuity Award, and a GRAMMY®.
Delve into the OK Go video vault HERE.