New video series! Joining the likes of Best Live Tracks and Best New Music, this series will present what I think are some of the Best Covers Ever.
Credit where credit is due, my friend Brent linked to these guys and it’s only through him that I found them. Nonetheless, this husband and wife YouTube sensation do incredible covers of songs you wouldn’t expect to sound so good. And they just seem so gosh darn happy!
Karmin — Price Tag
Karmin — Lighters
For his 30th birthday, Lucas Jatoba, a Brazilian living in Australia, had the brilliant idea to give back to the country he’d grown to love so much. The film below documents Lucas and friends creating and distributing “30 gifts to 30 strangers”. The result is absolutely heart-warming.
30 gifts to 30 strangers in Sydney from Lucas Jatoba on Vimeo.
Make sure to check out the Making Of… video as well for some fun behind-the-scenes footage.
I certainly know what I’m doing when I hit the big 3-0.
If you’ve had your head in the sand this week then maybe you’ve missed the Internet’s newest sensation: Rebecca Black.
Earlier this week her music video, “Friday,” went viral. Big time.
The YouTube video quickly garnered 12 million views in the course of just a few days and now she’s doing the talk show circuit. But what differentiates Black from other YouTube sensations like Canada’s own heart throb Justin Bieber (I prefer Dwight from The Office’s “Justice Beaver”) is the reason why she’s become so popular.
Unlike The Bieb, Black’s video isn’t growing in popularity because she’s a great singer—an undiscovered musical gem from a tiny little town in Ontario—it’s her completely over-the-top cheeseball of a music video, and lack of any semblance of musical talent. When I first saw the video which features, at several points, Black trying to decide which car seat to sit in—the front seat or the back seat?!—I wondered if this wasn’t an SNL Digital Short. It was ridiculous, playing up all kinds of stereotypes, complete with Rebecca’s constantly auto-tuned voice and some of the worst lyrics imaginable.
But apparently it’s for reals.
Doing some digging I found out that Rebecca Black was recruited by Ark Music Factory, a record label that puts out casting calls looking for the next Justin Bieber. Ark Music Factory finds young people, gives them the songs to sing, and then produces high quality videos to stick up on YouTube hoping to make it viral. Whether the song Black was given to sing was an honest effort by some pretty minimally-talented songwriters or whether the joke was on her all along, it’s hard to say but the result is priceless.
The fallout, however, has been anything but kind. The success of the video is based on its terribleness. Black has been criticized and made fun of and given the kind of treatment that only the Internet is capable of. Her fame hasn’t come from her talent but out of what’s now become an embarrassment for her—her fame is at her expense.
And for me, this whole episode begs a pretty interesting question for me: Are we bullying Rebecca Black?
This clip first aired during the Athens Summer Olympics in 2004.
Mary Carillo, former professional tennis player turned Olympic correspondent for CBS, was anchoring a late-night badminton match when she decided to compare “backyard” badminton to the stuff that the “bad boys of badminton” play at the Olympic Games. What ensues is a pitch-perfect Seinfeld routine delivered with such straight-faced seriousness that it makes you wonder if she wrote this ahead of time or if it’s all off the top of her head. Either way, Carillo doesn’t miss a beat and her performance is legendary. Shame I hadn’t seen this clip until now.
Via BoingBoing.
This video starts slow, but the pay off is huge.
Via BoingBoing.
I like a good prank, or dupe, and this one is up there. Website Funny or Die hired singer Jewel, dressed her up with a wig, a fake nose, and “business” clothes and sent her with a group of other business persons to a karaoke bar. Disguised as “Karen,” a mild-manner and ostensibly shy employee of a frozen meat company she blows the bar away with her stunning renditions of Jewel songs.
It’s a great gag, and worth the watch.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past month (and I don’t mean to discriminate against rock-dwellers, they have rights too) then you’ve no doubt heard of, if not seen the Old Spice Man: A washboard-ab’d man’s man who’s outrageous lifestyle is the premise behind the new Old Spice marketing campaign.
What makes these commercials so successful, I think, is that they’re hilarious, pretty clever, and just absolutely outrageous.
It’s obvious that Old Spice is going through a complete rebranding but perhaps the less obvious thing is that whoever they’ve got at the wheel is a complete genius. This is marketing for the 21st century. Their rebrand, “Smell like a man, man,” has become a complete Internet sensation. Their YouTube channel is getting a bazillion hits from people wanting to watch their hilarious TV spots and, what’s more, they’re pumping out new content daily online. They’re skipping the networks, skipping the distribution and putting it right online, for free, all by themselves giving people what they want which is, ironically, instant access to their commercials… and we’re eating them up!
They’ve gone even one step further by launching a new series, yesterday, of the Old Spice Man responding to messages from Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites. He has even gotten into a back-and-forth with Alyssa Milano culminating in him sending actual flowers to her house. We’ll have to wait and see if the Old Spice Man wishes to continue their relationship—only possible if he next donates $100,000 to the Gulf Oil Spill clean up, according to Milano.
But the kicker is that we will wait and see what happens next… this is an ad campaign that’s actually grabbed our interest and kept us entertained. Rarely, would a person go out of their way to watch ads, but Old Spice has got us doing exactly that. If anyone was wondering how to make money in a modern society where people skip the TV networks, download programs themselves, and watch ad-free television on their computers, I think Old Spice has hit upon the formula, and it’s pretty common sense actually, make ads that are entertaining.
