Prank Parody Becomes Official Anthem A video
by Luke McKinney 11,031 110 06/16/2010 09:05 AM 2683 views
A group of German students combined the World Cup and Eurovision with some fun on the park to create a hit YouTube video -- and earn a recording contract. Christian Landgraf rewrote Germany's Eurovision-winner "Satellite" to "Schland O Schland" -- an ode to Germany's soccer players and the World Cup. ("Schland" is slang for "Deutschland".)
Painting themselves in red, yellow, and black, they filmed themselves prancing in the park, re-recorded the lyrics, and met with massive success. Lawsuits followed, as they had totally stolen the original backing music -- though with English lyrics like "I went everywhere for you/I even did my hair for you," it's not like the original song was really using it.
The song was banninated from YouTube by EMI, until the song's original producer heard about it and correctly calculated "My song + Viral Hit + GODDAMN WORLD CUP = Cha-Ching!" The rights were cleared, and Universal signed the students to produce a single by this Friday.
It's the ultimate prank success story. Those responsible clearly had a lot of fun making it, more when it went crazy on YouTube, and now they really will be supporting what they love.
BONUS: They understand the World Cup so well, the video has those abominable vuvuzelas but they don't make noise.