Jonathan Coulton: Baby Got Back

[Lazybones]

http://www.devilducky.com/media/62518/


A soft rock cover of Baby Got Back.

[Mr. Analog]

Jeez ROFL! That was great!

[Thorin]

Ha ha

Reminds me of Alanis Morisette's cover of "Lady Humps" (or whatever it's called).

[Tom]

Reminds me of Alanis Morisette's cover of "Lady Humps" (or whatever it's called).

I hate that song. Both versions.

[Lazybones]

Found another one
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1741083/

[Tom]

Thats just wrong but a good wrong

[Darren Dirt]

famous-only-on-the-internet Portal guy's version of Baby Got Back vs. famouse-everywhere-else Glee ripoff

Virtually identical arrangement. Even side-by-side:
http://musicmachinery.com/2013/01/25/joco-vs-glee/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvZK1rsb5HU

But no credit.

Then again, maybe that was intentional, maybe Fox = the good guys here. Thus sayeth Cracked, anyway:
http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-reasons-to-be-thankful-when-glee-robs-you-blind/

Here, let us lay this out for you as simply as we can. Without looking it up, can you tell us who wrote the script for the Glee episode in question? Of course you can't, because no sane person reads credits. That's a terrible place to give an artist attribution. If you really want to give someone exposure for their work, you have to start an Internet riot, and from the looks of things, we pulled that off pretty handily.

It's pretty easy to set up, when you think about it. We steal your song and make it as obvious as humanly possible. Then we verbally give you the finger by telling you that you should be thanking us for it, knowing that you'll relay that message to your fans. Predictably, they get super heated, and we respond to their outcries with cold, dead silence, igniting their anger like flipping the NOS switch in an insultingly stupid fictional street race. Except in this case, our race car is exposure. The ensuing outrage gives the illusion of sparked interest on the Net, which prompts large sites like Wired.com, CNN, and Forbes to report on the injustice. And just like that, you're on the lips of every entertainment blog on the Internet, baby. Just like we planned it.

...

Yes, we are selling our exact 100 percent ripoff of your music on iTunes, and yes, we will profit heavily from it. And no, we will not give you credit for it under any circumstance. But isn't this industry about sacrifice and sharing? Whatever happened to the times when a large, above-the-law production could steal music from an independent artist, make millions of dollars from that song, and then tell the original musician to go @%&# himself without consequence?

...

We most certainly didn't do it because we knew that if we leaked that theft, the Internet would lose its mind and tune in to see if we actually had the balls to air it, thereby boosting our ratings by 35 percent.

No, we did it because we respect you as an artist, and we love your work. And we wanted to pay homage by showing you what it sounds like when someone else replaces your vocals. We wanted to show you how much money you could make by selling that song on iTunes if you just put your mind and the power of a large, untouchable conglomerate to it. We are just looking out for your best interests, and quite frankly, you're kind of being a little bitch about it.

http://www.jonathancoulton.com/2013/01/18/baby-got-back-and-glee/

Well, they aired it, seemingly unchanged. And it's now for sale in the US iTunes store. They also got in touch with my peeps to basically say that they're within their legal rights to do this, and that I should be happy for the exposure (even though they do not credit me, and have not even publicly acknowledged that it's my version -- so you know, it's kind of SECRET exposure).

his marketing-savvy/wise-guy response the very next day:
http://www.jonathancoulton.com/2013/01/26/baby-got-back-glee-style/

This went up in the iTunes store a lot faster than I expected (nice work there Tunecore), and some of you have already found it...

I've released this track as a single -- it should be on iTunes, Amazon, and Google Play eventually if it's not already. It's a cover of Glee's cover of my cover of Sir Mix-a-Lot's song, which is to say it's EXACTLY THE SAME as my original version. I'm releasing this under the same Harry Fox license I used for the 2005 release, so Mix will get all the royalties due to him.

I've been trying to figure out a positive way to channel all this energy. I haven't asked you guys to take any specific action throughout this thing, but now I am asking: buy the track, give it some stars, leave a comment (please be civil), and tell everyone you can. Call it a form of protest, awareness raising, viral PR hackitude, whatever you like. I don't know how big this will get, but there's a potential to make a lot of noise this way -- imagine if this thing charts!