Tame Impala – The Less I Know the Better
2015 · Directed by Canada
1.9M Likes
Best comments
1.“Director: How trippy do you want this video to be? Tame Impala: The less I know the better.”
More comments
- 2.“Everybody's gangsta till a gorilla steals your girlfriend.”
- 3.“Me, casually watching this. Sex scene comes on. My dad, who I haven't seen in 18 years: 'Whatcha looking at there, buddy?'”
The story
Kevin Parker almost left this one off the album. He figured it was too dorky, too much white-guy disco funk for a Tame Impala record. He'd also been obsessed with disco for a year or two, so in it went. Good call. It was the last single from Currents in November 2015, came fourth in Triple J's Hottest 100 that year, topped Triple J's countdown of the entire decade in 2020 and passed a billion streams in 2021. It's ten times platinum in Australia and four times in the US.
The video comes from Canada, the Barcelona-based directing collective, and it's a high school love triangle gone feral. A basketball player pines for a cheerleader. She falls for the team's gorilla mascot instead. Spanish actors Albert Baró and Laia Manzanares play the humans. Billboard called it a technicolor trip of high school lust and jealousy, with a side of King Kong. It's raunchy, too. Maybe not one for the office.
Canada shot it over three long days with a crew of about fifty. The look started with the idea of pouring paint over a surface, so everything is loud acrylic color with a black-furred ape stomping through the middle. The hand-drawn animation was supposed to go to an outside animator, but it hinged on Lope Serrano's own drawing style, so he ended up doing it himself at home over two weeks. Kevin Parker's guilty pleasure got the sweaty, hairy, paint-splattered video it deserved.
