Continuing to think outside of the box with the direction and creation of their music videos, OK Go utilized their artistic lens to create a vibrant and beautiful music video for their latest single, Obsession. Using stop-motion techniques and a wall of 567 printers that continually spewed reams of colored paper, the Los Angeles-based group was able to create one of the most impressive videos of 2017.
The striking beauty and attention to detail of Obsession is in line with the band’s other music videos. It’s also reminiscent of the band’s videos for I Won’t Let You Down, which used an aerial drone to capture a choreographed routine, and the zero-gravity nature of Upside Down & Inside Out.
That said, OK Go isn’t the only band that’s crafted a music video to be proud of. With that in mind, here are five other inventive and imaginative music videos that rival the creativity of Obsession.
Real Estate — Stained Glass
Using simple animation and a color-by-numbers approach, Real Estate was able to tap into the recent coloring book craze with their video for Stained Glass. Band members walk toward the camera throughout the entirety of the video, while the background scenery gradually fills in, becoming a vibrant patchwork of greens, reds, and yellow. The indie-rock band also created an interactive website in conjunction with the video, where you can color the animation in real time.
Arcade Fire — The Wilderness Downtown
With The Suburbs, Arcade Fire spends a fair amount of time reminiscing about their childhood homes. Prior to the album’s release, the Canadian act took that thematic aspect and created The Wilderness Downtown, an interactive film soundtracked to lead single We Used to Wait. The project essentially amounts to a custom-tailored music video, one reliant on your childhood address. Once entered, the site cleverly incorporates images from your hometown using Google Maps and Google Street View.
Sia — Breathe Me
The concept behind Sia’s Breath Me is simple: The video tells the story of the song through a series of Polaroid photos. Despite the basic premise, however, the video is quite meticulous. More than 2,500 Polaroids are shown in rapid succession, allowing you to watch the singer-songwriter’s story unfold through a series of snapshots opposed to a seamless video.
Oren Lavie — Her Morning Elegance
For Her Morning Elegance, Israeli songwriter Oren Lavie used stop-motion animation to tell the story of a woman’s dreams. But the video is not so much a dream sequence as it is a representation of it. The actress in the video acts out many of the lyrics using sheets, pillows, and other props as aids. Lavie also appears in the video, taking part in her adventures and preventing our on-screen heroine from drifting into another dream.
Coldplay — Up&Up
Taking cues from collage artists, directors Vania Heymann and Gal Muggia created a surreal visual experience for Coldplay’s Up&Up. The video seamlessly blends a host of unrelated elements together, creating dreamscapes in which cars orbit Saturn, cowboys ride submarines, and volcanoes erupt with popcorn instead of lava. Frontman Chris Martin and the rest of his British cohorts are portrayed as giants throughout the video, hanging among the clouds and distant mountain tops.
