The Black Keys get a little help from some famous friends on their upcoming 12th studio album, Ohio Players, which will be released April 5 on Nonesuch. The album’s lead single, “Beautiful People (Stay High),” was co-written with Beck and Dan the Automator, while Noel Gallagher and Greg Kurstin contributed to several other tracks.
The video for “Beautiful People” harkens back to the Keys’ 2011 “Lonely Boy” clip by again showcasing the dance moves of the security guard who appeared in it, Derrick T. Tuggle.
“We had this epiphany: ‘We can call our friends to help us make music,’” drummer Patrick Carney says of the project, the title of which nods to the duo’s Akron, Oh., roots. “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,” singer/guitarist Dan Auerbach adds. “It only feels like it adds some special flavor. 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. 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.”
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Ahead of Ohio Players, a new documentary on the band, This Is a Film About the Black Keys, will premiere at the South by Southwest Film Festival in March. It was directed by Jeff Dupre, best known for his 2012 film Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present.
Ohio Players is the follow-up to 2022’s Dropout Boogie, which debuted at No. 8 on the Billboard 200.
