"Vicarious" is a song by American rock

Rock music

Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...

 band Tool

Tool (band)

Tool is an American rock band from Los Angeles, California. Formed in 1990, the group's line-up has included drummer Danny Carey, guitarist Adam Jones, and vocalist Maynard James Keenan. Since 1995, Justin Chancellor has been the band's bassist, replacing their original bassist Paul D'Amour...

. The song is the first single

Single (music)

In music, a single or record single is a type of release, typically a recording of fewer tracks than an LP or a CD. This can be released for sale to the public in a variety of different formats. In most cases, the single is a song that is released separately from an album, but it can still appear...

 released from their fourth full-length studio album 10,000 Days

10,000 Days

10,000 Days is the Grammy Award-winning fourth studio album by American rock band Tool. The album was released on April 28, 2006 in parts of Europe, April 29 in Australia, May 1 in the United Kingdom, and May 2 in North America...

. Debuting on April 17, 2006 on commercial radio

Commercial broadcasting

Commercial broadcasting is the broadcasting of television programs and radio programming by privately owned corporate media, as opposed to state sponsorship...

, the seven-minute song entered the Billboard

Billboard (magazine)

Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...

Modern Rock Tracks

Modern Rock Tracks

Alternative Songs is a music chart in the United States that has appeared in Billboard magazine since September 10, 1988. It lists the 40 most-played songs on modern rock radio stations, most of which are alternative rock songs...

 chart at #2. It received a nomination for Best Hard Rock Performance

Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance

The Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance was an award presented to recording artists at the Grammy Awards, a ceremony that was established in 1958 and originally called the Gramophone Awards, for works containing quality performances in the hard rock music genre...

 at the 49th Annual Grammy Award

Grammy Award

A Grammy Award — or Grammy — is an accolade by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to recognize outstanding achievement in the music industry...

s.

Overview

The song features a 5/4 riff and describes the vicarious thrill the public receives from living through others in the media eye.

In the June 12, 2008 issue of Rolling Stone magazine the song was included on the list of top 100 guitar songs of all time. It was ranked one-hundredth.

The song is a playable track in Guitar Hero World Tour

Guitar Hero World Tour

Guitar Hero World Tour is a music video game developed by Neversoft and published by RedOctane and Activision. It is the fourth main entry in the Guitar Hero series...

.

Music video

The DVD

DVD

A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....

 released on December 18, 2007 contains an extended version of the much-delayed video counterpart for the song.
The video is completely made through use of CGI, making it Tool's first full CGI video, as opposed to stop-motion animation, which the band has used in their past videos.

The video was co-directed by guitarist Adam Jones

Adam Jones (musician)

Adam Thomas Jones is a three time Grammy Award-winning Welsh-American musician and visual artist, best known for his position as the guitarist for Grammy-Award winning band Tool. Jones has been rated the 75th Greatest Guitarist of all time by the Rolling Stone and placed 9th in Guitar World's Top...

 and artist Alex Grey

Alex Grey

Alex Grey is an American artist specializing in spiritual and psychedelic art that is sometimes associated with the New Age movement. Grey is a Vajrayana practitioner. His body of work spans a variety of forms including performance art, process art, installation art, sculpture, visionary art, and...

 and also features creative input from Chet Zar

Chet Zar

Chet Zar is an American artist notable for his dark visual art, make-up effects, and digital animation. He is most widely known for his work with Tool's music and live videos. He is the stepson of American fantasy artist James Zar.-Life:Zar was born in San Pedro, California...

. Also included on the DVD are short documentaries on the making of the video and on Jones's previous work in film and television, and commentaries on the video from comedian David Cross

David Cross

David Cross is an American actor, writer and stand-up comedian perhaps best known for his work on HBO's sketch comedy series Mr...

.

Personnel

• Maynard James Keenan
  Maynard James Keenan
  Maynard James Keenan is an American rock singer, songwriter, musician, record producer, winemaker, and actor. Originally from Ohio, Keenan spent his high school and college years in Michigan. After serving in the Army in the early 1980s, he attended Kendall College of Art and Design in Grand Rapids...
  
   — vocals
  Singing
  Singing is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, and augments regular speech by the use of both tonality and rhythm. One who sings is called a singer or vocalist. Singers perform music known as songs that can be sung either with or without accompaniment by musical instruments...
  
  
• Adam Jones
  Adam Jones (musician)
  Adam Thomas Jones is a three time Grammy Award-winning Welsh-American musician and visual artist, best known for his position as the guitarist for Grammy-Award winning band Tool. Jones has been rated the 75th Greatest Guitarist of all time by the Rolling Stone and placed 9th in Guitar World's Top...
  
   — guitar
  Guitar
  The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
  
  
• Justin Chancellor
  Justin Chancellor
  Justin Gunnar Walter Chancellor is an English musician formerly in the band Peach but best known as the bass player for Grammy Award-winning rock band Tool. Chancellor is of Norwegian and English descent...
  
   — bass
  Bass guitar
  The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
  
  
• Danny Carey
  Danny Carey
  Daniel Edwin "Danny" Carey is an American drummer best known for his work in American Grammy Award-winning rock band Tool...
  
   — drums
  Drum kit
  A drum kit is a collection of drums, cymbals and often other percussion instruments, such as cowbells, wood blocks, triangles, chimes, or tambourines, arranged for convenient playing by a single person ....