Kentucky rock band My Morning Jacket released the video for “Outta My System” on Monday. The mostly animated video features comedian and actor Zach Galifianakis as a wizard who torments the band. While a live-action Galifianakis doesn’t appear in the video, and he doesn't voice his character, he is credited at the end of the clip.
Around 2005, Galifianakis made an unsanctioned video for Anita Baker’s 1986 song, “You Bring Me Joy.” The video, directed by Michael Blieden, featured the bearded comedian lip-synching the smooth jazz song in a bar, on the street and while rolling in the ocean. The clip was released on Galifianakis’s 2006 stand-up DVD, Live at the Purple Onion.
After seeing “You Bring Me Joy,” singer-songwriter Fiona Apple asked Galifianakis, a friend of hers, to give the same treatment to her 2006 song, “Not About Love.” Once again, Blieden directed the clip and Galifianakis lip-synched, with a lyric sheet in hand, while lying in bed and dancing in the street and the ocean, as a frustrated Apple looked on.
In 2007, Kanye West met Galifianakis through West’s personal trainer, who had been showing the rapper videos of the comedian. West had already made a video for “Can’t Tell Me Nothing” but came to one of Galifiankis’s shows and asked him to make an alternate version. The comedian agreed as long as he could do whatever he wanted. It turns out what he wanted was another lip-synch directed by Blieden, this time featuring folksinger Will Oldham on Galifianakis’s North Carolina farm.
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