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octosquigglezhey all . im back with something completely unrelated to my music or any of that . (not really , it is somewhat related to my music .)
yesterday when i got home from school , i got some funny little (not really little) packages as a direct result of me being irresponsible with my money, and now i'm the proud owner of most of ok go's immediate discography . and different 3 versions of oh no . (all i wanted to buy was an ita bag...)
one of those versions is the japanese special reissue , which includes 2 bonus songs AND 2 bonus videos on the cd . pretty cool , eh ? well alongside that , there was a long piece of paper of translations of the songs on that cd in japanese (and the lyrics for the bonus track down for the count , both in jpn and english) , which is normal of course , ive bought jpn releases of albums before , but also on that long ass piece of paper was a track-by-track commentary by damian kulash , and after some searching i couldn't find anything about it , which means it hadn't ever been translated into or released in english. until now ! (and it doesn't seem many people posted about it in jpn spaces because i also looked it up in japanese...) (seriously what's up with you people it's been almost 20 years)
after 5 hours of me sat down , swapping tabs on jisho , google docs , deepl , and my pdf scan of the original track-by-track in japanese , i got the entire thing translated . isn't it funny ? i translated something originally in english that was translated into japanese back into english .
i think it's important to preface before we go on that I AM NOT A PROFESSIONAL TRANSLATOR NOR AM I FLUENT IN JAPANESE. i am simply a 17 year old who takes japanese as their high school language class (3 years in , still shit at writing kanji .) and really likes ok go . (and vocaloid . and other japanese music . but mainly vocaloid . please make me sit down and rewatch all of harumaki gohan's mvs) i did cross reference with deepl translations just to make sure i wasn't spewing straight bullshit , but please take these translations with a grain of salt . if anyone reading this is actually solid in their nihongo and wants to proofread my work (or if you just wanna look at the original and be captivated by the characters) here's my pdf scan of the commentary and knock yourself out .(and please don't tell me that this was already released somewhere or else i will cry and my soul will forever be writhing in pain /j)
and if damian is reading this . im sorry for butchering your words and also please release the original version thanks
i left out most of the footnotes , but included notes where I felt was necessary , in parenthesis and in a bright pink font .
いいね？いいよ。張り切って行こう！
◆ OK Go Damian’s 『Oh No』 track-by-track commentary ◆
This album's theme is "disastrous". Anything that could be called a cruel sight. This country (America), it’s power-hungry politicians that rule over it. Blind devotion to religion spreading hatred and violence, inside and outside the country. Conflict, greed, arrogance, a short-sighted mindset, are the ones that win in the end. To make matters worse, rock music, what’s basically supposed to be our small “sacred ground” separating us from all of that, after years of self-praise, has shut itself into a small world made to amuse the curiosities of stubborn experts and die-hards.
But still, we continue to party. This is our Hindenburg-party-rock, our Titanic-dance-music. Basically, our so-called “disaster” is a stage that’s ready to be set for anything. Whatever it is, it’ll end up a total mess, but swimming against the current is what happiness always is. Why should we succumb to such things? At the same time, Oh No is the unhesitant scream we let out, overcome with fear as everything falls into hell, and the roars we bellow as we continue to party, a direct response to the haters.
1) Invincible
This song is the album’s oldest piece, but at the same time, the newest. The opening guitar—the part that our producer, Tore, is most proud of—is something I recorded on a micro-cassette years ago. I was looking for a table for my friends who were riding the Jet Coaster at Six Flags at the time, and coincidentally I rediscovered this recording. We settled on this final version after scrapping 2 whole other songs based on that riff. Up until the final stages of this song, I wrote and scrapped 6 sets of the lyrics. Not a single one of them could capture the ironic laughter, the one that comes with ruin, that the song needed. So I set it aside until a good idea came up. The entire time we were in Sweden. Then, during our final week in Malmo, in the middle of a dark and gloomy November, this cartooney Armageddon finally took shape. Those guys are going to come to destroy Earth, and this terribly ferocious woman, so ferocious she could make your chest collapse, is the only one powerful enough to protect humanity.
2) Do What You Want
Lately, Tim’s been absolutely, euphorically smitten with a girl. He’s always been the calm, collected presence within the band. He would be the only member who would remain composed when faced with a girl so sexy she’d normally leave anyone in a daze. But recently, something quietly slipped deep within him. This song, in short, is about the euphoric feeling of “summer vacation/school’s closed forever” that his mind was addicted to in the midst of a new love last year. I wanted it to be in the same vein as Sweet’s Teenage Rampage, an audacious, shameless “hedonist anthem”. After that, I couldn’t resist throwing in a few of those insufferable political jabs (“Shock and awe”, “the trickle-down days”) onto those idiots waving their fists around. Just to remind them of the chaos that’s going on outside of their own party.
3) Here It Goes Again
When this album began, I broke up with my girlfriend of many years. Afterward, right as I was about to transition from that stinging grief that was diffusing itself into every single nerve ending into a self-reflective sadness where you “confront and question who you seriously, really are,” I encountered an old college roommate at a small bar in Chicago, where we decided to hold a “mutual consultation session,” with just the 2 of us. Then, unexpectedly, or rather I wasn’t quite thrilled at first, all of my other college friends showed up, together. They were in a much brighter mood than we were. Shortly after that, everyone went back to my apartment.
That night, I was hanging out with a few old friends, but the morning after, I was completely smitten with a girl, and was absolutely stunned. My head foggy with a hangover, I thought I’d fall into a self-loathing, guilty state, but instead there was this dazzling bliss. This song takes place right around the time after she left my apartment. In the midst of the dizzying, surprising state of realization that I was utterly captivated by her, I lay in my bed staring at the ceiling, laughing, shaking my head in surprise at how easily I'd let my guard down.
4) A Good Idea at the Time
This is an answer song to The Rolling Stones’s Sympathy For The Devil. Mr. Jagger (within the song) has the devil boast proudly about the agony and destruction he had begun, but in our case, we make the devil recognize that the “true” evil is actually the humans’ deeds themselves. The devil might have been wandering around the human world for all of the world’s worst atrocities. However, the devil is nothing more than that 1 person spectating, overseeing silently. When Christ was sentenced to death, in the case of the Stones’ devil, he made Pilate wash his hands and seal his fate. But our devil is only here to ask Pilate “How late do the bars here stay open for?”
5) Oh Lately It’s So Quiet
It’s not normal for me to write lyrics quickly. In most cases, it feels like carefully applying oil to a pair of roller skates, and rolling down a slippery slope down to the depths of overthinking. So when one night, lying in bed, this song popped into my head, furthermore born in a form that was close to completion, it was a very happy surprise. The groove and chords were tweaked continuously, thinking it was going to become a louder song, a sort of incomplete version of David Bowie’s Young Americans. Then suddenly the lyrics descended upon me, and I couldn’t help but face this direction instead.
6) It’s A Disaster
For the first few months of writing this album, we mainly tried to overcome the creative block we’ve fallen into during the roughly 2-year tour for our first album. We spat out countless useless ideas before we came up with something we liked, but then several months passed and we wondered if such a thing, something we liked, actually existed. This song was exactly that turning point, and in a way set the mood for this album entirely. This song’s lyrics convey the feeling of those severe circumstances from that time.
7) A Million Ways
Most of the album is like that(?), but this song was recorded in the studio as a “one-take live performance”. I was entirely set on not editing this track at all. I didn’t want accuracy achieved through digital “frankensteining” that could possibly take away from the 4 on the floor, disco beat feel. Therefore, we had to keep at it until we got a take that felt like, “This is it!” By the end, we did 56 takes. That’s a new record for the studio we were in. My older sister used to be a professional ballroom dancer, so she helped choreograph the dance for this song.
8) No Sign of Life
Obviously, this song is abundantly Pixies-esque. When I was 13 years old, Tim played me some of their songs, and they’ve been our idols ever since. Throughout this whole album, our friend Eric Drew Feldman helped out, amplifying the Pixies influence further. Eric produced many of our demos. He’s the coolest guy ever. He not only was in charge of keyboards on the Pixies’ last 2 albums, then produced Frank Black’s last 2 solo albums, he was also in Captain Peachheart’s band in the 70s. He now plays for P.J. Harvey.
When arriving in Sweden, that demo was the point of lengthy conversations between Tore and his assistant producer Jens. How much Pixies-ness can you incorporate before it becomes too Pixies-like, was the question. With this song, we agreed with Tore. Tore felt that it was crazy to try and not sound like our favorite band.
9) Let It Rain
This song is about the joy in falling into a nervous breakdown. Falling into an emotional state of lethargy, along with the feeling of being liberation in an existential sense. Therefore, we wrote this song for a friend. That friend, who, engulfed with anxiety from constant self-maintenance, collapsed under the chaotic circumstances into a vulnerable state upon losing it.
10) Crash the Party
Originally, we wrote this song for a movie and made a demo for it. (It was never used.) In its unfinished state, we attached lyrics to it, and played it on tour. However, when it came time for recording, it was impossible for me to not sing the lyrics I’ve been singing live, as much as I absolutely hated the lyrics. This song took me an absurdly long time. During that time, I really tried to forget the version that made its way into my brain from prying itself into my skull during the tour.
11) Television, Television
The reason Tore is such a great producer lies in his ability to pay close attention to detail without losing sight of the bigger picture. The album needed a broken, crushed drum sound, and everyone agreed, but when it came time to actually play it, Dan had to summon every ounce of self-control to leave the clearly broken snare drum we bought for 6 dollars at a garage sale as is. So whenever he tweaked it a little bit, Tore would mouth through the talkback mic “What are you doing, Dan? Sting isn’t in the building anymore.” In this song, you can hear how horrible the drums sound.
12) Maybe, This Time
The base/core of this song was written by Andy (Duncan), but originally he thought the chorus would explode into a big anthem. Once we played the song together in the studio, it gradually shifted into this dark, eerie tune.
This song’s lyrics were written in a state of disbelief and fury after witnessing America plunge into a critical state of crisis in the early morning of November 3rd. (※ On November 3, 2004, President Bush’s reelection was confirmed.) Several days later, after rereading what I wrote I was shocked how cliche and preachy it was. So I decided to turn that song toward myself, attacking the part of myself I hate the most.
13) The House Wins
To be honest, this was a demo I recorded in the basement of a friend’s house in Los Angeles. We just re-recorded the drums and added a viola. A few weeks into recording, we had already re-recorded the song with Tore, but there was just something about the original that I couldn’t help but feel that it could move people. Out of all the lyrics on this album, this is the one I am most pleased with. The 3rd verse establishes the overarching theme for the whole album. A summary of the sense of disillusionment.
「Ice age upon catastrophic ice age of selection and only one result has trickled in: The house wins. If evil were a lesser breed than justice after all these years, the righteous would have freed the world of sin. But this bet is where the “parent” wins; it’s always rigged for the house to win.」
Originally translated into Japanese by Sumi Imai.
yesterday when i got home from school , i got some funny little (not really little) packages as a direct result of me being irresponsible with my money, and now i'm the proud owner of most of ok go's immediate discography . and different 3 versions of oh no . (all i wanted to buy was an ita bag...)
one of those versions is the japanese special reissue , which includes 2 bonus songs AND 2 bonus videos on the cd . pretty cool , eh ? well alongside that , there was a long piece of paper of translations of the songs on that cd in japanese (and the lyrics for the bonus track down for the count , both in jpn and english) , which is normal of course , ive bought jpn releases of albums before , but also on that long ass piece of paper was a track-by-track commentary by damian kulash , and after some searching i couldn't find anything about it , which means it hadn't ever been translated into or released in english. until now ! (and it doesn't seem many people posted about it in jpn spaces because i also looked it up in japanese...) (seriously what's up with you people it's been almost 20 years)
after 5 hours of me sat down , swapping tabs on jisho , google docs , deepl , and my pdf scan of the original track-by-track in japanese , i got the entire thing translated . isn't it funny ? i translated something originally in english that was translated into japanese back into english .
i think it's important to preface before we go on that I AM NOT A PROFESSIONAL TRANSLATOR NOR AM I FLUENT IN JAPANESE. i am simply a 17 year old who takes japanese as their high school language class (3 years in , still shit at writing kanji .) and really likes ok go . (and vocaloid . and other japanese music . but mainly vocaloid . please make me sit down and rewatch all of harumaki gohan's mvs) i did cross reference with deepl translations just to make sure i wasn't spewing straight bullshit , but please take these translations with a grain of salt . if anyone reading this is actually solid in their nihongo and wants to proofread my work (or if you just wanna look at the original and be captivated by the characters) here's my pdf scan of the commentary and knock yourself out .
and if damian is reading this . im sorry for butchering your words and also please release the original version thanks
i left out most of the footnotes , but included notes where I felt was necessary , in parenthesis and in a bright pink font .
いいね？いいよ。張り切って行こう！
◆ OK Go Damian’s 『Oh No』 track-by-track commentary ◆
This album's theme is "disastrous". Anything that could be called a cruel sight. This country (America), it’s power-hungry politicians that rule over it. Blind devotion to religion spreading hatred and violence, inside and outside the country. Conflict, greed, arrogance, a short-sighted mindset, are the ones that win in the end. To make matters worse, rock music, what’s basically supposed to be our small “sacred ground” separating us from all of that, after years of self-praise, has shut itself into a small world made to amuse the curiosities of stubborn experts and die-hards.
But still, we continue to party. This is our Hindenburg-party-rock, our Titanic-dance-music. Basically, our so-called “disaster” is a stage that’s ready to be set for anything. Whatever it is, it’ll end up a total mess, but swimming against the current is what happiness always is. Why should we succumb to such things? At the same time, Oh No is the unhesitant scream we let out, overcome with fear as everything falls into hell, and the roars we bellow as we continue to party, a direct response to the haters.
1) Invincible
This song is the album’s oldest piece, but at the same time, the newest. The opening guitar—the part that our producer, Tore, is most proud of—is something I recorded on a micro-cassette years ago. I was looking for a table for my friends who were riding the Jet Coaster at Six Flags at the time, and coincidentally I rediscovered this recording. We settled on this final version after scrapping 2 whole other songs based on that riff. Up until the final stages of this song, I wrote and scrapped 6 sets of the lyrics. Not a single one of them could capture the ironic laughter, the one that comes with ruin, that the song needed. So I set it aside until a good idea came up. The entire time we were in Sweden. Then, during our final week in Malmo, in the middle of a dark and gloomy November, this cartooney Armageddon finally took shape. Those guys are going to come to destroy Earth, and this terribly ferocious woman, so ferocious she could make your chest collapse, is the only one powerful enough to protect humanity.
2) Do What You Want
Lately, Tim’s been absolutely, euphorically smitten with a girl. He’s always been the calm, collected presence within the band. He would be the only member who would remain composed when faced with a girl so sexy she’d normally leave anyone in a daze. But recently, something quietly slipped deep within him. This song, in short, is about the euphoric feeling of “summer vacation/school’s closed forever” that his mind was addicted to in the midst of a new love last year. I wanted it to be in the same vein as Sweet’s Teenage Rampage, an audacious, shameless “hedonist anthem”. After that, I couldn’t resist throwing in a few of those insufferable political jabs (“Shock and awe”, “the trickle-down days”) onto those idiots waving their fists around. Just to remind them of the chaos that’s going on outside of their own party.
3) Here It Goes Again
When this album began, I broke up with my girlfriend of many years. Afterward, right as I was about to transition from that stinging grief that was diffusing itself into every single nerve ending into a self-reflective sadness where you “confront and question who you seriously, really are,” I encountered an old college roommate at a small bar in Chicago, where we decided to hold a “mutual consultation session,” with just the 2 of us. Then, unexpectedly, or rather I wasn’t quite thrilled at first, all of my other college friends showed up, together. They were in a much brighter mood than we were. Shortly after that, everyone went back to my apartment.
That night, I was hanging out with a few old friends, but the morning after, I was completely smitten with a girl, and was absolutely stunned. My head foggy with a hangover, I thought I’d fall into a self-loathing, guilty state, but instead there was this dazzling bliss. This song takes place right around the time after she left my apartment. In the midst of the dizzying, surprising state of realization that I was utterly captivated by her, I lay in my bed staring at the ceiling, laughing, shaking my head in surprise at how easily I'd let my guard down.
4) A Good Idea at the Time
This is an answer song to The Rolling Stones’s Sympathy For The Devil. Mr. Jagger (within the song) has the devil boast proudly about the agony and destruction he had begun, but in our case, we make the devil recognize that the “true” evil is actually the humans’ deeds themselves. The devil might have been wandering around the human world for all of the world’s worst atrocities. However, the devil is nothing more than that 1 person spectating, overseeing silently. When Christ was sentenced to death, in the case of the Stones’ devil, he made Pilate wash his hands and seal his fate. But our devil is only here to ask Pilate “How late do the bars here stay open for?”
5) Oh Lately It’s So Quiet
It’s not normal for me to write lyrics quickly. In most cases, it feels like carefully applying oil to a pair of roller skates, and rolling down a slippery slope down to the depths of overthinking. So when one night, lying in bed, this song popped into my head, furthermore born in a form that was close to completion, it was a very happy surprise. The groove and chords were tweaked continuously, thinking it was going to become a louder song, a sort of incomplete version of David Bowie’s Young Americans. Then suddenly the lyrics descended upon me, and I couldn’t help but face this direction instead.
6) It’s A Disaster
For the first few months of writing this album, we mainly tried to overcome the creative block we’ve fallen into during the roughly 2-year tour for our first album. We spat out countless useless ideas before we came up with something we liked, but then several months passed and we wondered if such a thing, something we liked, actually existed. This song was exactly that turning point, and in a way set the mood for this album entirely. This song’s lyrics convey the feeling of those severe circumstances from that time.
7) A Million Ways
Most of the album is like that(?), but this song was recorded in the studio as a “one-take live performance”. I was entirely set on not editing this track at all. I didn’t want accuracy achieved through digital “frankensteining” that could possibly take away from the 4 on the floor, disco beat feel. Therefore, we had to keep at it until we got a take that felt like, “This is it!” By the end, we did 56 takes. That’s a new record for the studio we were in. My older sister used to be a professional ballroom dancer, so she helped choreograph the dance for this song.
8) No Sign of Life
Obviously, this song is abundantly Pixies-esque. When I was 13 years old, Tim played me some of their songs, and they’ve been our idols ever since. Throughout this whole album, our friend Eric Drew Feldman helped out, amplifying the Pixies influence further. Eric produced many of our demos. He’s the coolest guy ever. He not only was in charge of keyboards on the Pixies’ last 2 albums, then produced Frank Black’s last 2 solo albums, he was also in Captain Peachheart’s band in the 70s. He now plays for P.J. Harvey.
When arriving in Sweden, that demo was the point of lengthy conversations between Tore and his assistant producer Jens. How much Pixies-ness can you incorporate before it becomes too Pixies-like, was the question. With this song, we agreed with Tore. Tore felt that it was crazy to try and not sound like our favorite band.
9) Let It Rain
This song is about the joy in falling into a nervous breakdown. Falling into an emotional state of lethargy, along with the feeling of being liberation in an existential sense. Therefore, we wrote this song for a friend. That friend, who, engulfed with anxiety from constant self-maintenance, collapsed under the chaotic circumstances into a vulnerable state upon losing it.
10) Crash the Party
Originally, we wrote this song for a movie and made a demo for it. (It was never used.) In its unfinished state, we attached lyrics to it, and played it on tour. However, when it came time for recording, it was impossible for me to not sing the lyrics I’ve been singing live, as much as I absolutely hated the lyrics. This song took me an absurdly long time. During that time, I really tried to forget the version that made its way into my brain from prying itself into my skull during the tour.
11) Television, Television
The reason Tore is such a great producer lies in his ability to pay close attention to detail without losing sight of the bigger picture. The album needed a broken, crushed drum sound, and everyone agreed, but when it came time to actually play it, Dan had to summon every ounce of self-control to leave the clearly broken snare drum we bought for 6 dollars at a garage sale as is. So whenever he tweaked it a little bit, Tore would mouth through the talkback mic “What are you doing, Dan? Sting isn’t in the building anymore.” In this song, you can hear how horrible the drums sound.
12) Maybe, This Time
The base/core of this song was written by Andy (Duncan), but originally he thought the chorus would explode into a big anthem. Once we played the song together in the studio, it gradually shifted into this dark, eerie tune.
This song’s lyrics were written in a state of disbelief and fury after witnessing America plunge into a critical state of crisis in the early morning of November 3rd. (※ On November 3, 2004, President Bush’s reelection was confirmed.) Several days later, after rereading what I wrote I was shocked how cliche and preachy it was. So I decided to turn that song toward myself, attacking the part of myself I hate the most.
13) The House Wins
To be honest, this was a demo I recorded in the basement of a friend’s house in Los Angeles. We just re-recorded the drums and added a viola. A few weeks into recording, we had already re-recorded the song with Tore, but there was just something about the original that I couldn’t help but feel that it could move people. Out of all the lyrics on this album, this is the one I am most pleased with. The 3rd verse establishes the overarching theme for the whole album. A summary of the sense of disillusionment.
「Ice age upon catastrophic ice age of selection and only one result has trickled in: The house wins. If evil were a lesser breed than justice after all these years, the righteous would have freed the world of sin. But this bet is where the “parent” wins; it’s always rigged for the house to win.」
Originally translated into Japanese by Sumi Imai.
