Just two months after OK Go released their new album Of the Blue Colour of the Sky on EMI, the band has announced its split from the label by “mutual agreement.” OK Go are creating a new label, Paracadute Recordings, to promote and distribute the disc. “We’d like to thank the people who have worked so hard on our behalf,” said OK Go singer Damian Kulash in a statement. “And we’d like to thank our fans for making this choice an easy one for us.”
About two weeks before the premiere of their latest conceptual video for “This Too Shall Pass,” the band asked to be released from its contract, and EMI agreed. “We realized we wanted to leave EMI in 2002 — it was just a matter of when,” Kulash tells Rolling Stone. “It’s something of a gift for them to let us go. We’re not worth fighting and we’re not worth fielding annoying phone calls from all day long.”
Photo: Rose/WireImage
The split comes just a little over a week after the group unveiled their new video for “This Too Shall Pass,” a Rube Goldberg-esque clip that has already racked up 6.8 million views on YouTube in nine days. (Watch it above if you’ve somehow missed it.) As Rolling Stone previously reported, OK Go were publicly feuding with EMI over the fact that the label’s “no embed” policy for music videos was hurting both the band’s popularity and finances — they first entered the national spotlight thanks to their treadmill video for “Here It Goes Again.” After a series of open letters and op-ed pieces and public statements, EMI finally dropped their “no embed” policy for “This Too Shall Pass.”
OK Go and EMI will officially part ways on April 1st, and OK Go will celebrate their independence with a performance on the Jimmy Kimmel Show that ...
Article Source: Rolling Stone : Rock and Roll Daily