Fridays Hokey Music Clip: The Key of Awesome Vs Foster the People

Sometimes today's modern music just leaves me confused and weirded out, a vacuous remnant of an artform that was an expressive domain for story tellers and poets. A road to success that was littered with hard work establishing a name, building up and connecting with a fan base of those that can relate to your message and style, and skills honed through hard graft, or at least raw talent.
Lately, in the "pop culture" world anyway, it seems to have morphed into a popularity contest and a constant state of media and fame whoring made all the worse by quick fix, no hard yards shows like American Idol and the X Factor, where it comes down to the contestants ability to be managed and molded by record company execs to churn out the latest disposable profit generators before they wilt away into the blur of the next big thing. Too cynical?
Then along comes a parody that makes it all ok again.

Lately the parody site I have been turning to most is the youtube channel "The Key of Awesome".

I have been subscribed to their channel since clip 4 or 5, and never looked back. These guys really are freaken awesome!
It is amazing that a bunch of people can get together and take their own brand of pisstake to a whole new level, and make a pretty good income off it. They even were on 20/20 the other week discussing the methods in which they have moved from actors, waiters and bellboys to youtube stars in their own right.

Their latest offering is a parody clip of Foster The People's "Pumped up kicks" and is hilarious - not only is it very clever, but the subtle conversation about fame whoring is bang on!

So who are The Key of Awesome?

Converting an interest into a lucrative career path.

The Key of Awesome have been around as a series since October 2009, and are up to their 49th parody clip, each one is as awesome as the next.
Some are just gold - make your way through the collection < http://www.youtube.com/show/keyofawesome >there is something in there for every taste.

The Key of Awesome are just one of the sketches that the team behind them, Barely Political, have made over the years.
Check out some of their other channels:

• http://www.youtube.com/barelypolitical
• http://www.youtube.com/show/obamagirl

Barley Political started life as the brainchild of founder Ben Relles, but now has quite a staff running the empire, which has changed hands several times, first being purchased by Next New Networks just as their first clip was gaining traction with the Obama Girl phenomenon, and then Next New Networks was acquired by YouTube itself in 2011.

From their website www.barelypolitical.com:

Barely Political was launched in June 2007 with the debut video “I've Got a Crush on Obama,” featuring soon-to-be icon Obama Girl. That video quickly became one of the most talked about and blogged about comedy videos of all time. Since then Barely Political has become one of the most popular comedy networks online. The YouTube channel alone has now been viewed over 1 billion times, making it one of YouTube's top 10 most viewed channels ever.

In 2009, Barely Political expanded beyond the political realm with the comedy network Barely Digital -- a comedy network devoted to parodying digital and pop culture. Combined, these networks have now been viewed over 900 million times and are home to such hit shows as the Obama Girl series, Tech Know, Autotune the News, and the Key of Awesome. The Key of Awesome is currently the 2nd most popular web series on the internet according to Mashable. And President Obama himself called Barely Political videos an "example of the fertile imagination of the Internet.

Here is the clip that started it all for them, Obama Girl. It is quite different from what they are doing now, but it captured the blog community and the groundswell of change that was occurring in the States with the presidential election of Barack Obama.

Here is the original clip by Foster the People, sure it is catchy, and a great, socially responsible, comment on the state of bullying in our schools, but all of this gets a little lost in the video of some pretty boys chillaxing and being slackers.
For such a serious subject, apparently it is all about the shooting spree in a US mall by teenager Robert Hawkins < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westroads_Mall_shooting > - copy & paste it people - the "official" video does nothing to enhance the message of the song. Weird. I guess they wanted their fans to read into it, embrace the message and share the story, whilst leaving the rest of the sheeple to bop along grooving to a really messed up concept.

The Foster the People's song "Pumped up Kicks" has seen quite a lot of remix and parody action lately, with this amazing dubstep version that is well worth a watch - this guy is awesome! The dancer featured here is Marquese Scott, (Booking: http://xceltalent.com/) and the track has been remixed by Butch Clancy.

Have we had enough yet?
No?
Lets get back to the Key of Awesome.

I was originally planning to do a blog about them last week when the Israel Dagg "moves like Dagger" poster was doing the rounds, but got distracted by the Heart2Heart travesty, but true to form the Key of Awesome came out with another clip I could talk about.

Anyway, the Key of Awesome with another great Parody!

and the original to end....

feel free to leave comments.....