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

“All Along the Watchtower”

The Jimi Hendrix Experience | 1968

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."

More Song Stories entries »

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