About

Dew Army is a YTMND series that involves combining a short clip of a mondegreen (an easily misunderstood fragment of a song) with text or an image representing the phonetic interpretation of the misinterpreted lyrics. Despite being labeled "Dew Army," individual instances of the YTMND series almost never contain the words "Dew Army" in the title.

Origin

On September 17th, 2005, YTMND user MasterSitsu created a page titled "DEW!!!" that featured a photo of dew on a branch accompanied by a small segment from actor and singer David Hasselhoff's 1994 album title song “Du,” which is an intimate form of subject pronoun "You" in German.

Spread

On March 8th, 2006, the YTMND site Dew Army Newsreel called on others to join the "Dew Army" by creating mondegreen-themed YTMND pages. The contest attracted an enormous amount of attention from the YTMND community and 150 sites were made within the first 16 hours. The contest ended on March 13th, 2006, with the Hyphen page coming out on top. A list of all Dew Army contest entries can be found on the YTMND Wiki.^[1] The Dew Army Musical, a 2-part compilation of Dew Army contest entries, was uploaded to Google Video^[4][5] on March 23rd, 2006. On April 10th, 2006, the YTMND Soundtrack Volume 10 was released and included a bonus disc featuring the Dew Army contest winners.

Notable Examples

Direct Style

These YTMNDs typically use text consisting one or two homophones or mondegreens from the accompanied sound clip, similar to the original "Dew" page.

• Dew (Over 315,000 views)

• Corn On The Cob (Over 650,000 views)

• Obamaaaaa (Over 60,000 views)

• Hyphen (Over 50,000 views)

• A Tack (Over 18,000 views)

• Buttons (Over 15,000 views)

• Fly (Over 13,000 views)

• Chair (Over 13,000 views)

• Pickles (Over 11,000 views)

Contextual Style

These type of Dew Army pages use images and text that match the lyrics perfectly, but are presented in a widely different context than what was meant in the original lyric.

• It's On (Over 190,000 views)

• Roll Out (Over 85,000 views)

• Floor (Over 50,000 views)

• Ram Stein (Over 25,000 views)

• Hat (Over 17,000 views)

• Tic Tac (Over 12,000 views)

• Snooper (Over 11,000 views)

• Lamination (Over 8,000 views)

Rebus Style

This style uses an entire line from a song, instead of just a couple words, and is typically accompanied by music in languages other than English. This is similar to the "misinterpretation" YTMND fad.

• Mariah Carrey Can't Forget (Over 130,000 views)

• Fly Like A Negro (Over 75,000 views)

• PayShince (Over 65,000 views)

• Shakiira Wants A Wii (Over 60,000 views)

• Mike Richards Caught In The Death Star (Over 45,000 views)

• Troi Sent Dough, Who Sent That Ho-Ho? (Over 19,000 views)

• Letter C (Over 19,000 views)

• I Will Get Five (Over 18,000 views)

• No Plates Too High (Over 13,000 views)

Search Interest

Search queries for "dew army" spiked in March of 2006, the same month the "Dew Army Newsreel" YTMND was created.

External References