Wow... Wilco and Popeye, together. Here's the press release:
Wilco & Popeye
POPEYE & WILCO: KING FEATURES' MIGHTY MARINER MIXES IT UP WITH WINDY CITY'S ADVENTUROUS ALTERNATIVE ROCKERS
New Video Combines Song from America's Foremost Rock Band withA Return to Classic Animation in the First Hand-Drawn Popeye Cartoon in More Than 25 Years
NEW YORK and CHICAGO -- January 25, 2012 -- Well, Blow Me Down! King Features and dBpm Records are combining creative forces for a series of firsts with the release of a new cartoon and animated music video for Wilco's "Dawned On Me" featuring Popeye the Sailor Man and the Chicago band.
The new video can be viewed in its entirety (above) and at wilcospinach.com.
Wilco's sweet, whimsical love song comes from their latest album, the 2012 Grammy-nominated The Whole Love. The video is directed by Darren Romanelli, the fashion and pop culture innovator who conceived the collaboration between Wilco and King's flagship character.
This collaboration between American icons is one of the first music videos Wilco has released since 1999 and it presents the band to the masses in a fresh, new way: as animated images, side-by-side with Popeye and his friends Olive Oyl, Swee' Pea, Wimpy and Bluto.
As one of the earliest animated characters, introduced in 1933 by Fleischer Studios, Popeye has become one of the most enduring and iconic cartoon characters of all time and is forever entwined in the evolution of animation. The music video marks the first new Popeye cartoon since "Popeye's Voyage: The Quest for Pappy," the 3-D CGI primetime TV special and deluxe DVD release produced by King Features Syndicate for Popeye's 75th Anniversary in 2004. In what has become a primarily digital world, this new video marks the first hand-drawn, frame-by-frame rendering for Popeye cell animation since the Popeye and Son series from 1987.
This certainly isn't Popeye's first foray into love territory: the Sailor Man first met his "goil," Olive Oyl, in Elzie Crisler Segar's popular Thimble Theatre comic strip in the 1930s and their legendary love only grew and captivated the imagination of fans all over the world. The couple even made People Magazine's list of the Greatest Love Stories of the 20th Century.
In this new video, Popeye vies for Olive Oyl's affections with his usual nemesis, Bluto, and with a new challenger, Wilco front man Jeff Tweedy.