Music Video Review: Red Hot Chili Peppers – ‘Go Robot’

Red Hot Chili Peppers are known for their surreal music videos, often mixed with artistic trends and hilarity. Their latest video for ‘Go Robot’ is no different; taking inspiration from the 1977 disco flick Saturday Night Fever and Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 masterpiece A Clockwork Orange. 

The Chili’s have been teasing this video for the past month, giving snippets of frontman Anthony Kiedis in full white body paint with a bowler hat and codpiece, the Chili’s bustin’ some 70s moves in a car and the band eventually making it to a disco club.

Directed by Tota Lee, the video itself is a stark contrast to their video for the debut single ‘Dark Necessities’. ‘Necessities’ brought out the obviously more darker tones, whereas ‘Go Robot’ is an uplifting track in itself compared to its companions on the record, so a video like this seems rather fitting. The contrast is also bringing out what is so great about The Getaway as a whole; the Chili’s ability to waver through so many different genres in one record.

As mentioned before, the video itself is a homage to the disco era of the 70s and Saturday Night Fever. The video opens with Kiedis walking down the streets of Brooklyn with the distant flair of Travlota portraying Tony Manero in Fever. Kiedis portrays the titular robot, who ends up sneaking into a disco dance contest where the Chili’s themselves (as their 70s alter egos) are also competing. It’s here where Kiedis’s robot alter ego meets the robot-girl of his dreams (Stephanie Crousillat) and proceed to dance the night away in ecstasy.

Similar to Foo Fighters soap-opera parody video for ‘Long Road to Ruin’, each band member is credited under different names. Each name references to someone unique about each band member: Kiedis is Cole Dammett (his screen name for movies that he appeared in as a child), Flea is Michael Peter (his real first and middle names), Chad Smith is Chadwick Gaylord (also his real first and middle names), Josh Klinghoffer is J.K. Dashwood and director Tota Lee is Thoranna Sigurdardottir.

The video for ‘Go Robot’ fits perfectly into the Chili’s videography, hitting all the right amounts of surrealism and humor. It also delves into the 70s era aesthetic seemlessly, which isn’t an aspect the band have delved into before other than the quick transitional eras the band undertook for the video of ‘Dani California’ back in 2006.

Watch the video for ‘Go Robot’ below.