I like to think that I stay pretty much “plugged in” and on top of what’s going on in pop culture, but I totally missed out on Carly Rae Jepsen’s Call Me Maybe at first. I had heard snippets of it in the background muzak in st
ores, but as of early July I had not heard the entire song. Kind of like hanging out with a friend who has a cold, but somehow staying uninfected. Infection is an appropriate word to use for this viral song (and the seemingly endless parade of viral videos it has mutated into) and you might as well quarantine me now. One of my best friends (also a Cyber-Anthropologist) sat me down and showed me the original video by Jepsen, telling me that “This song is gonna be the next Friday”.
At that moment, I had a BAD feeling about this.
Now that I have been infected, I suppose you could consider me the Typhoid Mary of pop music, and I don’t mean the Marvel character, either.
I normally wouldn’t forcefully inflict anyone with mindless pop drivel, unless of course it is smart and terribly clever (like Amanda Palmer’s creative and totally NSFW live cover of Rebecca Black’s Friday) but this new Call Me Maybe fan video may just break the internet by doing
the one thing that George Lucas cannot seem to do….by making Star Wars cool again!
I won’t lie. I watched it five or six times in a row, and each time it brought a goofy smile to my face, much like the first time I saw A New Hope in the theater. The creator, James Covenant, has gone back through the six Star Wars films and found every instance of a character saying a word from the song and edited them together to form the lyrics of Jepsen’s pop mantra. I cannot even imagine the amount of patience and time it took to assemble this video, and I’m amazed at how many times in the Star Wars saga a character says “bad” or “crazy”.
Do yourself a favor, nerds of the world, and take a few minutes to make your day a little brighter…even if you hate that damn song. As of Friday, July 20th, the video has 3,627,107 views. Don’t be left out in the cold, half buried in a sliced-open Tauntaun!
I have since checked out the other viral fan-made videos of this song. Although none of them are quite as epic as the Star Wars version, several do deserve to be watched (regardless of having to hear the song again). Posted below are just a few of my personal favorites.
Winner of “Second Coolest Cover of Call Me Maybe” goes to indie-duo Pomplamoose (Jack Conte and Nataly Dawn) who have collaborated with the likes of Ben Folds and YouTube sensation Julia Nunes at different times. Pomplamoose has created a fantastic video to go along with their vocal mashup of Call Me Maybe and Gotye‘s Somebody I Used To Know, called Do Not Push:
Another great version is by Jimmy Fallon, Carly Rae Jepsen and The Roots. Check out “The Mad Glockenspieler What Glockenspiels At Midnight” in the lower right hand of the frame:
Finally, the amazingly cute Sesame Street-produced Cookie Monster version, called Share It Maybe, Glockenspiel Also Included:
Next week, we’ll examine the growth effect that Call Me Maybe has had on the international glockenspiel industry….
About Brent Kincade
Brent Kincade has often wondered if there was an alternate universe where Aquaman was instead called Waterhombre. He also spends a fair amount of his waking life patiently waiting for friends to mention a Thunderdome so he can roll his eyes and plead, "Can't we just get BEYOND Thunderdome??" (Six times, thus far.) His first comic book was Spidey Super Stories #4 in 1974, his first Star Trek episode was "City On The Edge of Forever" in 1975, his first Doctor Who was "The Visitation" in 1984. Once when he was young, he stashed his vinyl Halloween Spider-Man costume in the neighbor lady's shrubs and was later caught red-handed, crawling into the shrubs to change into costume because he had, "Heard a cry for help". He's a father, an artist, a graphic designer, a cartoonist, and usually pretty handy in a pinch. Brent requests the story of his days be co-written by Harlan Ellison, Steven Moffat and Neil Gaiman, drawn by John Romita, scored by Ben Folds and riffed on by the fine folks at Mystery Science Theater 3000.
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