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Bad Lip Reading: The Art of Digital Dissing

November 27, 2011 by Lonnie Lardner

Call me sophomoric,  but when I watched these clips, I laughed until started gasping for air. The kind of out-of-control laughter you experience when you’re supposed to be silent, and reverent in church.

As of this writing, the author of this extraordinarily popular — unintentionally irreverent — viral video series remains anonymous. My hunch is — not for long. In case you’ve missed these masterful works of art, I’ve included three here — though no doubt many more will emerge from the shadows of cyberspace soon.

The premise is this: Over existing video of today’s campaign speeches and pop songs, the writer overdubs new words and phrases — whether they make sense or not. That’s the cool part. He insists they are not political parodies, but you be the judge.

The young, yet-to-be-identified songwriter from Texas says the idea came to life after his own musician mother began losing her hearing.  She became ambien online such an adept lip reader that she inspired her son to mute the sound on the TV and try it himself. What started as a legitimate learning experience soon morphed into an art form. His first music video overdub was “Friday” by Rebecca Black. The writer says it looked like Black was singing “gang fight” and then — he made it so.  Since then, the author has rewritten enough material to fill his own Bad Lip Reading Channel on You Tube.

From Taylor Swift to Herman Cain — no one is safe. Some artists and newsmakers openly support the Bad Lip Reading movement (Michael Buble gave his enthusiastic props on YouTube) but due to charges of copyright infringement (Universal Music Group already issued a YouTube “takedown”) it’s anyone’s guess how long we’ll get to roar at this comedy gold.

(See Village Voice story here.)

Filed Under: Newsmakers Tagged With: bad lip reading, comedy gold, Herman Cain, James Blunt, Michael Buble, MIchele Bachmann, Mitt Romney, music videos, musicians and politicians, overdubbing, political humor, Rebecca Black, Taylor Swift, Universal Music Group

Comments

  1. Ron Gardner says

    December 4, 2011 at 10:33 pm

    Ya got me! I have seen links to these before but just never took the time to play/listen to any of them. I understand what you mean about laughing so hard!! Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

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