Literal Music Videos (2008)

added Jun 01, 2009 at 10:07AM UTC

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The “Literal Music Video” starts with an easily recognizable music video (typically from the 80’s) and uses both subtitles and newly recorded audio to narrate what is literally happening in the music video; often highlighting the bizarre visual narratives used.

LMV’s were first popularzed when film-maker/musician/producer of SuperNews! on CurrentTV/founder of Dustfilms, Dustin Mclean created his literal translation of Take on Me by Ah-Ha! and posted it to funnyordie.com in October 3rd of 2008.

The next week, DustFilms followed up with Head Over Heels, the Tears for Fears classic.

Dustfilms created a total of four Literal Music Videos, most of which were promoted on various video sites, and received significant activity on social news sites like Digg and Reddit.

Imitation of form

While the Literal Music Videos began as a very deliberately manufactured set of viral videos, they inspired others to take part in the creation and interpretation of their own LMV’s.

e.g.

Total Eclipse of the Heart literal music video.

The literal Rick Roll

We Built This City

Phonetic Translations also share the themes of parody and alternate lyrics, but instead utilize the original audio, with subtitles that replace the lyrics with “what it sounds like.”

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9 Comments

Jamie Dubs
Jun 01, 2009 at 04:15PM UTC , Jamie Dubs wrote:

do we have an entry for this already? I think we at least have one of Phoenetic Translations, which is similar/related

Chris Menning
Jun 01, 2009 at 04:52PM UTC , Chris Menning wrote:

Jamie, I know we’ve got a ton of research on both this and Phonetic Translations, but I don’t think we’ve gotten around to putting it in the database yet. I’ll get right on that.

gav
Jun 02, 2009 at 06:16AM UTC , gav wrote:

Phonetic translation s are similar – but there is a slight difference.

literal videos involve changing song lyric based on the contents of the video clip. While phonetic translations are misheard lyrics, and hence do not require the original video clip to work.

Chris Menning
Jun 02, 2009 at 02:19PM UTC , Chris Menning wrote:

Now that I’ve done the Phonetic Translations entry and seen how long it is, I think Literal Music Videos could stand to have its own entry.

Gav has a point about the difference. While they’re very related, they’re two different forms.

MazeMe
Jul 28, 2009 at 06:30PM UTC , MazeMe wrote:

Thanks to this phenomenom around a million dutch people got RickRoll’d on May 14th, 2009.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_NERJp5Gas

Patrick
Nov 16, 2009 at 10:02AM UTC , Patrick wrote:

http://www.funnyordie.co.uk/videos/eab2a63415/loser-literal-video-version

quite good one I think

Amerah Ames
Dec 27, 2009 at 06:08AM UTC , Amerah Ames wrote:

Oh man I love these. Dascotjr’s are the best.

ShoopDaWoop
Feb 24, 2010 at 04:50PM UTC , ShoopDaWoop wrote:

There are several “what it sounds like” NumaNuma Videos on YouTube, rite?

Vlad
Feb 24, 2010 at 06:16PM UTC , Vlad wrote:

There’s a currently existing entry for this (Phoenetic Transalations.) But I’m pretty sure that the “Literal Music Video” is a literal interpretation of the Song’s Music Video, rather than Misunderstood Lyrics, which are common in a Phoenetic Transalation.

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