Watch: Broken Bells Borrow Hall & Oates Video

Broken Bells' first video for "The Ghost Inside," starring Mad Men's Christina Hendricks, was a slice of space-age visual exotica that's too rarely seen in these axed-video-budget days. Now, the band has put together a second take on a video for the song couldn't be more different — but is equally awesome in its own way.

Director Matt McCormick has combined the song with Hall & Oates' 1981 video for "Private Eyes" (which is probably one of the clips former H&O manager was referring to in their Behind the Music episode when he said the band had "the worst videos on television") by perfectly superimposing Broken Bells singer James Mercer's mouth over Daryl Hall's. The effect is at once transfixing and, it must be said, hilarious.

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McCormick told Vulture that the handclap sounds in "The Ghost Inside" reminded him of "Private Eyes," so he "looked up the 'Private Eyes' video on YouTube and realized that song structure and tempo was pretty darn close to that of 'Ghost Inside,' and from there just started playing around with syncing up the visuals from the 'Private Eyes' video with 'The Ghost Inside.' "

"Playing around" indeed: watch the results for yourself!

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Song Stories

“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell | 1974

Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded this song for her album Court and Spark, but she had to switch from her regular band to make the song sound exactly the way she wanted. "I had attempted to play my music with rock & roll players," she told Rolling Stone. "They’d laugh, 'Awww, isn't that cute? She's trying to teach us how to play.'" Mitchell switched to a jazz band, Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, and scored the biggest hit of her career in the process.

More Song Stories entries »

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