This Too Shall Pass

"This Too Shall Pass" is a song by American rock band OK Go. It was released as the second single from their third studio album, Of the Blue Colour of the Sky, in January 2010. The band took the unorthodox route of creating two official music videos for the song, both of which premiered on YouTube. The first features a live performance of the song in collaboration with the University of Notre Dame Marching Band. The second features a giant Rube Goldberg machine, constructed to operate in time with the song. The popularity of the second music video of the song has been compared to that of the band's video for "Here It Goes Again", helping to boost live performances and single song sales for the group but not significantly improving sales of the Colour album. Difficulties with EMI, their corporate label, in marketing and distribution of the videos led the band to form their own independent label shortly after the videos' releases. Song The lyrics to "This Too Shall Pass" are written to encourage its audience, burdened with some figurative weight, to "let it go, this too shall pass" in the near future instead of continuing to let the weight keep them from enjoying life, akin to the meaning of the original phrase, This too shall pass. The song continues much of the theme of Of the Blue Colour of the Sky, which, according to Damian Kulash, was about "searching for hope in hopeless times"; "This Too Shall Pass" and other songs from the album were written at the onset of the late-2000s recession. Billboard considered the song to be a "psych-pop anthem", similar to MGMT's "Kids"; this is in part due to the album's producer Dave Fridmann who had also worked with MGMT and The Flaming Lips and brought some of the same musical stylings along. First music video: Marching Band The first video for the song was released on YouTube, on January 12, 2010, to coincide with the release of the album and the single. Co-directed by Damian Kulash and Brian L. Perkins, it was filmed in October, 2009, in South Bend, Indiana. The video is somewhat unusual in that it does not feature the album version of the song. Rather, it features an original recording that was actually performed live during filming of the video. OK Go's Tim Nordwind noted that the song lent itself well to large orchestration. In the video, the members of OK Go are seen in a field wearing marching band garb. The uniforms were originally from Rochelle Township High School of Rochelle, Illinois.