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That couldn't be an easy routine to pull off live. How nervous were you about the performance?
I was really nervous before we started practicing. It had taken us eight days to learn the dance, and we couldn't get it right more than every five attempts. Luckily, it was like riding a bike. The day before, I wasn't nervous at all. Then we did a dress rehearsal in front of just the performers, and it's weird, thinking Justin Timberlake just did his thing, and I'm about to jump on a treadmill. I got terrified. But by the time we performed that evening, I was fine. I don't know if it was the shot of Jameson I had before we went on, but I was grinning the whole time.

There was a very sweet moment when the routine was over and you jumped into the air, like you'd just won The Apprentice or something.
It really felt like that. Well, I've never seen that show, but yeah. It was so unlikely that we could be among these people. The whole thing was such a ridiculous Cinderella story.

So what happens after the VMAs? Tell me about after-parties.
The first party we went to was extremely loud and packed, and apparently very hard to get into, but it was just abysmal. There was this super-loud techno music, and everyone was looking around, trying to figure out if people around them were famous. The Raconteurs were having a party at their hotel, which was basically a hundred people at the hotel bar, so we went there. But we had been given this invitation by Diddy — is that what he calls himself now?

Anyway, Diddy sees us in the stairwell of the VMAs, and he's there with his entourage, and he calls for his cameras, and he's complimenting our performance. And it's clear he didn't remember the band's name, because he's like, "Boys, introduce yourselves to the camera." And my sister Trish was there with us, and I introduced her as the choreographer of the video, and everyone let out this big roar, which was great, because she really is the hero in this whole thing. It was a wonderful, joyous moment. And then he hands us a pass to his artists-only party, and all these guys in the background are like, "Diddy I want one! Give me a pass!" And he says, very calmly, "You gotta have a hit record."

Please tell me you went to Diddy's party.
Oh, we were not closing out the night without going to Diddy's party. But by the time we got there, the police had stormed the place and shut it down. We watched the news the next day, but there was no report of anything. It was a crazy night. At the Raconteurs' party, Axl Rose told me to get a good lawyer and a good manager. And I guess as far as advice you can get from Axl Rose, it's pretty good.

The fact that Axl Rose told you anything makes a good story.
It's weird, because I'm not that impressed with celebrity. I can't keep track of actors' names. When someone points out a famous person, I'm usually like, did I used to work with him? Is that my second cousin? But at the VMAs, I did feel star-struck. But that's the whole point of the thing. It's a closed loop of celebrity mythology. MTV chooses who they're going to make stars of that year, and they have award shows and give those stars awards.

Which is part of what made it so strange to see you guys there. You were interlopers, almost, because your music broke another way.
Maybe I'm making too much of this, but what a strange cultural moment when MTV, in the bright lights of one of their own biggest moments, announces that we're a band they didn't break. You know, hats off to the new kids who did it a different way. You never would have expected to see something like that five years ago.

And how interesting that Hype Williams was the lifetime achievement recipient that night. He's known for these overblown, cinematic videos. And here's OK GO, rocking the treadmills.
I hope it means that MTV is keeping up, that they don't want to turn into the old guard.

You mentioned earlier that your sister Trish [Sie] was the hero in all this. Can you talk more about that?
My sister and I have been making ridiculous shit since as long as we have both been alive. Sometimes in interviews, people ask things like, "How did you guys commandeer the internet for this radical form of marketing?" I mean, it's satisfying how much people like this video, but we just made these things that were really fun. When we made the treadmill video, we were ambivalent about releasing it. We weren't sure if we wanted to show ourselves dancing again. We didn't want to be pigeonholed. But we went to my sister's house in Orlando, and we got to do something that's so much fun. The treadmills were my sister's idea.

Treadmills work symbolically with the lyrics, too: "Here it goes again . . . "
And it worked for our frame of mind. It's like, another video, another dance routine: Here it goes again.

Why do people like watching you guys dance so much?
You know, I've given so many bullshit answers to that. It's because it's obvious that we're not professional dancers. We're a bunch of dudes. If you put Christina Aguilera's dancers on those treadmills they would look way more expert, but who wants to see that? I mean, I do love Christina Aguilera's videos, but we're ostensibly normal people doing this elaborate dance.

So are you doing another video?
If another idea that good comes along, we'll do it. Actually we have another idea, and we're sitting on it right now. It's a weird position we're in, because we can totally make more things, because it's such an instant of overwhelming attention, but I'm scared of doing something that sucks too much.

You guys also have a JCPenney commercial.
Yeah, that was really lucky for us.

Was there any ambivalence about that, though? Don't people call you sell-outs for offering up your music for a commercial?
I wonder if they do or not. I think people felt that way in 1995, and maybe anybody who's living under a rock might think you can still make money off record deals, but you can ignore their opinion. We're a relatively successful band, and we can't make enough from the record company without licensing our music to people. Every band that's come out in the past five or ten years has had their music in an iPod or Volkswagen commercial.

Speaking of your critics, why does Pitchfork hate you so much?
Yeah, they really don't like us [sighs]. I think it's personal. They were a small Chicago-based site when we started out as a small, Chicago-based band, and I think there were some infidelities with someone's girlfriend. But they really hate us. They've always really hated us. They've also made a name for themselves by being this inverse bell curve — they love you if you're way too cool for school, and they love you if you're Justin Timberlake. And anything in the great big middle, they have a problem with.

The new album has a concept of women having crushing, supernatural powers.
[laughs] Well, you do, don't you?

It's mostly been a secret until now.
You're not the first to have noticed it, but it's not something I did consciously. Love songs or relationship songs are the most basic and communicative form of songs, and also the hardest to write. The form is so clichéd and closed, and there are such specific rules about how to make love songs. It's so daunting to write a really good love song. You hear Elvis Costello sing "Almost Blue," and you're like, I have to stay the fuck out of this. And then you listen to the radio, and you hear what passes for emotionality, and it makes you want to pull your hair out. I must have been in a place where I just felt like giving a supernatural element to these songs.

You wrote a piece for Elle Girl about why girls shouldn't date musicians. Did you mean that?
It was intended to be funny, but it was all true. Let's say this: I've never shown it to my wife.

I didn't realize you were married. Congratulations.
Thanks. I got married three months ago.

Wow. I can't believe you got married in the middle of all this.
I kind of can't either, but I did.

You have lots of teen girl fans. These girls have posted thousands of videos on YouTube of them interviewing you after concerts, and they're so obviously in love with you and also very young. How do you handle that? Does it get tricky?
Generally not. The social gap is big enough that people keep to their side of their line. The videos you're talking about are posted because we have these fan correspondents for every show, and it's not always teen girls, by the way. I think of it like giving them a jungle gym. When I was at my most vehement in listening to music, I leapt from album to album, and when I ran out of Pixies albums, it was just a drag. It was a drag to reach the end of the jungle gym. But this is a significantly changed music world. I assume most people don't care about what a fifteen-year-old girl is going to ask me, because usually they ask me what my favorite food is and what my favorite color is, and these questions that are completely uninteresting and really have no answers. But it provides an infinite netherworld to go hunting in.

What is your favorite color?
Green.  n°

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