The Black Keys share energetic new video for ‘Beautiful People (Stay High)’

23 January, 2024

atrick Carney and Dan Auerbach at THE BLACK KEYS launch of their new single “Beautiful People” at Chateau Marmont's Bar Marmont on January 13, 2024 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images)

The Black Keys have shared an energetic new video for their single ‘Beautiful People (Stay High)’ from their forthcoming LP.

The track serves as the first offering from their 12th album ‘Ohio Players‘ which is set for release on April 5 via Nonesuch/Warner. Today (January 23) the band have released the single’s accompanying video.

Directed by Chris Saunders, the video showcases beautiful people across the world, bringing high-energy dancing to match the track’s retro-inspired, feel-good sentiment.

‘Beautiful People (Stay High)’ was written by the band’s own Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney, alongside help from longtime friends Dan “The Automator” Nakamura and Beck.

‘Ohio Players’ will feature a variety of guest appearances too, including collaborations with the likes of Noel Gallagher and Beck. Pre-order/pre-save it here.

“We had this epiphany: ‘We can call our friends to help us make music’,” Carney said of the collaborative approach the band had towards the project. “It’s funny because we both write songs with other people – Dan all the time [as a solo artist and producer], me when I’m producing a record. That’s what we do.”

“No matter who we work with, it never feels like we’re sacrificing who we are,” Auerbach agreed. “It only feels like it adds some special flavour.”

“We just expanded that palette with people we wanted to work with. We were there to support them and their ideas, to do whatever we could to see that moment flourish,” he continued. “But when it came time to finish the album, it was just Pat and me. We’d never worked harder to make a record. It’s never taken us this long to make an album. We took our time and did it right.”

Ahead of the release of the in April, a new documentary about the band will be given its world premiere at the 2024 edition of SXSW festival.

Titled This Is a Film About the Black Keys, the project will be shown for the first time in March, and traces Auerbach and Carney’s journey from two neighbourhood kids jamming in a basement in Ohio to rock ‘n’ roll superstardom. It was directed by Jeff Dupre, who is best known for his 2012 film Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present.

‘Ohio Players’ follows the band’s 2022’s LP ‘Dropout Boogie’. In a three-star review of the album, NME shared: “Where previous albums have effortlessly gunned for their arena-punching heights, these days the band are thriving by making music more fit to shake down the walls of their local Nashville dive bars. The blues kings show no signs of turning off their well-beaten path here, but they’re still capable of conjuring enough magic on the journey.”

Last year, The Black Keys spoke to NME about their forthcoming record, in which they discussed working on it with “incredible” Noel Gallagher. “He’s hilarious and super talented,” said Patrick Carney. “We were referring to him as ‘The Chord Lord’ because he’s just a perfectionist with it.”

Noel Gallagher has also commented on the music he’s made with The Black Keys, saying that the songs he’s co-written with them are “fucking amazing”.

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