Work It was the first music video produced for I Kveld Med Ylvis. The track debuted Season 1, Episode 1, though it was made several months prior and featured on pilot versions of the talk show. The track is Ylvis's first English language song, and the first of several co-written with Christian Løchstøer. The track was entirely self-produced.
The song is in the R&B genre, and features a detailed explanation of the female anatomy and the biological process of sexual arousal. However, this rapidly segues into a hot tub commercial/microbiology lesson.
The Story of 'Work It'[]
Prior to the inaugural screening of the video for 'Work it', Ylvis explained their rationale for the video:
[English transcript courtesy of Ylvis Facebookies]
Bård: "I feel that all efforts from the elderly directed to youngsters are considered uncool because they are filled with information. Every time you put information into pop culture, it becomes uninteresting. A couple of years ago we tried to make a hip hop video,or something."
Vegard: "It was an R&B song, we tried to get big"
Bård: "We tried to make a huge hit"
Vegard: "We tried to make a hit, but we failed and didn't get known at all. In hindsight we realised we had put too much information into it, and it's too much for the youngsters to relate to. So they just don't care about it"
Ylvis - First IKMY Pilot version - Part 2 (English subs)
Clip from the first known I kveld med Ylvis pilot, where 'Work it' is believed to have had its debut screening.
By the time the first episode of I kveld med Ylvis aired in 19 September 2011, Ylvis had changed their story slightly:
[English transcript courtesy of Lundsdotter]
Vegard: "We only ever made one rap music video in our lives, but to make up for it, it was very detailed"
Bård: "Some might think it was too detailed".
The Video[]
The video was shot entirely in and around Oslo, apparently under strict time and budget constraints. The hot tub scene was filmed at Bislet Baths.
In the opening scene of the video we see Ylvis in black suits and shades covered in gaudy golden chains dancing in a packed nightclub surrounded by beautiful women. They appear to be the only men in the club. As the women grind provocatively around them they rap about how the 'bitches goin' crazy'. At first glance a misogynistic portrayal of avarice, things take a bizarre turn when Bård states his intentions to get a girl 'into his bed'. Not to sleep, but to "make love instead".
He then proceeds to describe, with the help of a graphic overlay, the detailed features of the girl's anatomy. He is soon joined by Vegard, who elaborates on the physiological stages of female arousal. They then launch into a catchy refrain, where Vegard explains (in painstaking detail) that when his brother says "You gotta work it", he's actually talking about sex.
As Ylvis launch into the second verse, the scene jumps to a bubbling hot tub, where they have brought two willing young ladies for a champagne-fueled soak. However, they neglect their potential lovers in order to read the instruction manual of the aforementioned hot tub and splash about in the water. In the closing scene, the disappointed ladies vacate the hot tub, leaving Ylvis to splash around and ponder about how to inhibit the growth of opportunistic bacteria that threaten to thrive in the warm and damp environment of the hot tub.
The moral of the story appears to be that too much information really can destroy the magic and mystery of desire. Some things are better left unsaid.
Ylvis - Work it -Official music video HD-
An earlier version of the song and video, originally shown during a preliminary pilot of I Kveld Med Ylvis, features on the Ylvis Facebookies YouTube page. This version of the track is less polished, and the video features additional typography of key words from the first verse, such as 'labia' and 'clitoris'.
Perez Hilton and vagina talk[]
Interestingly, the music video for Work It garnered brief international fame for Ylvis, long before their viral success with The Fox. The video was brought to the attention of celebrity gossip blogger [Hilton], who promptly enthused that American comedy trio The Lonely Island had just been 'served' by 'Norway's finest virtuosos' (read the full article HERE).
As a result of this, the video (originally posted on Funkenhauser's YouTube page) attracted the attention of English-speaking viewers, whose comments prompted Ylvis to poke fun of their brief moment of fame on I kveld med Ylvis.
Ylvis - What kind of vagina is that? (eng.subs)
Ylvis and Calle discussing internet reactions to 'Work It'.
The Video Shoot[]
Fan blog Ylvis Suomi interviewed Vegard in August of 2015 about the Work It video shoot:
[YS] When I began planning this interview, I started a conversation online about what question you would like to ask Ylvis. I got a few very good questions, but then the conversation turned into what were everyone's favourite bacteria.
[VEGARD] Okay. [laughs] It's funny with bacteria... When we made Work It, we were so exhausted. That was the first music video we made. We didn't respect the amount of work at all in advance. We had the shoot, that was our hard deadline. We lived in Bergen at the time, so we came over the day before the shoot, in the morning, with our laptops. We had a mic stand and a microphone with us on the plane. So we took the airport train into town, off to the offices. We fine-tuned the lyrics.
The director would normally have the song ready, so he could visualise every little bit of the song. At this point nothing was ready. He just had the broad lines the day before the shoot. I was like ok, let's have two locations, the bathtub and the club, and let's just see what this is going to be.
We had this ventilation system in the offices that contaminated the whole area with sound, so we had to wait until nine o'clock until we could start recording. So it was just me and Bård in a storage room. It had the most stuff on the shelves so it didn't have the echo. We were in there until 5 o'clock I think. Then we went down to the hotel and we slept for 1,5 hours. Then up again. It was like checking in at 6 o'clock in the morning and checking out at half past seven.
Then we went down to make the video, super tired. If you look closely, you can see that Bård's eyes are really red when he's in the pool because it was so awful. We were so tired when we did the lyrics that we didn't really check them. Of course it says "bacterias", with an s. It's funny. We didn't realize that until the whole thing was finished. Shit happens.
Who did the background track? Was that done in a studio?
Actually we had help from a friend there, Erlend Sellevold. He's done a lot of things with Ralph Meyerz and the Jack Herren Band, where Tarjei plays. Bård met him coincidentally at an airport, and they started talking about the song. He said “send it over, that's fun”. But it wasn't like just send it over and have a finished result, we had a lot of back and forth, a lot of comments. It was the first video and the first season.
Bonus:[]
Ylvis arguing about the Work It video shoot (from the 24-Hour Livestream)
Ylvis-brødrene «krangler» på vei til Marienlyst (English subtitles)
Live performances[]
Ylvis has performed Work It several times as part of The Expensive Jacket Tour. The first performance was during the opening of the tour at Oslo Spektrum on 28 February 2014. This version is modified somewhat from the version in the official music video. The second verse is performed by Vegard in a Reggae fusion style, reminiscent of the musician Shaggy. While doing so, Bård launched into his now infamous 'Bårdance'.
Ylvis - Bårdance in Oslo Spektrum
Clip of the original Bårdance at Oslo Spektrum.
BONUS: Vegard seen practising the reggae style in the Concorde offices (Vine)