The Yoko Ono Sings "Star-Spangled Banner"
Don't get me wrong. I'm not one of the haters. I just think Yoko Ono is funny.
She’s funny because she’s implacable. Nothing gets under her skin. She has Buster Keaton’s deadpan, and to this day she keeps puttering along, doing her thing. Thus it has always been, and thus it always shall be. She went on stage with Lennon and Chuck Berry and wailed at the top of her lungs, confusing the other musicians and bewildering the audience. Yoko “sings”, Chuck Berry looks aghast, Yoko makes zero adjustments and continues, nonplussed, even after her microphone was cut. She doesn’t care — a house could fall around her ears and she would barely acknowledge it. People like Bill Burr watch Yoko and start twitching like Inspector Dreyfus at Clouseau’s inanities. First rule of comedy: She commits to the bit.
But she isn’t known as a comic figure. She has two roles in our current cultural landscape, first as John Lennon’s wife and widow, and second as a highbrow artist. The tension between these two roles is key to her cultural significance. Some Beatles fans believe that Yoko was the cause of the Beatles breakup. Others, like Burr and David Lee Roth, believe that her influence on Lennon tamed and emasculated his music. But Yoko was a successful artist before she ever met a Beatle. Yoko certainly helped Lennon find his solo voice and was in the room when Lennon’s most powerful songs were written. John later regretted not sharing credit with her, as her book “Grapefruit” has several poems beginning with the word “Imagine”.
I don’t remember exactly when I was inspired to remix Yoko. I saw one of her bewildering pieces on Youtube: “Voice Piece for Soprano and Wish Tree 2010”, in which she caterwauls without accompaniment at an art gallery. For whatever reason, I flashed on Rosanne Barr, who had recently been in the news for her (intentionally) crude performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at a baseball game, which, in turn, was clearly influenced by a similar scene in the film “The Naked Gun”, where Leslie Nielsen attempted to sing the anthem as a last-minute replacement for an opera singer. Somehow, synapses in my brain short-circuited and I got the giggles for about 5 minutes, thinking of what it would be like to have Yoko Ono sing the national anthem.
Sue me, I’m not a fan of the “The Star-Spangled Banner”. It is over the top, bombastic, notoriously difficult to sing, and racist (“No refuge could save the hireling and slave, From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave”). And unlike Mel Brooke’s rendition of a pre-historic anthem “Let ‘em all go to hell, except Cave ‘76!” “Star-Spangled Banner” does not have the benefit of brevity. From a comedic standpoint, this turgid, jingoistic nonsense is fair game.
To manifest my vision, I simply downloaded a solo piano version of the national anthem that I found on Youtube and the audio/video file of the Yoko Ono performance. I added the piano track under Yoko’s screaming, and the rest is history:
This mash-up hit Youtube and did fairly well, racking up 300k views to date. They say “don’t read the comments”, but in this case the comments are the best part. While I clearly disclose in the description that it is a mash-up/parody, the majority of my audience believe that the clip is real, and that Yoko is mocking the national anthem. There are a litany of insults hurled at her, blaming her for breaking up the Beatles, as well as holding her to blame for John Lennon's death. But a few people get the joke right away, and I was rewarded with “LOL's”.
At some point, and I don’t know how long after, I wondered if it might be possible to boost my stats by using a popular song. Katy Perry’s “Firework” was a big hit at the time, and I tried with the same video clip, again opting for a simple piano backing track.
I was off on a bender now, and quickly uploaded more versions that were of varying success, including Adele’s “Someone like You”.
The Katy Perry remix was somehow attuned to the zeitgeist. Unlike “Star-Spangled Banner”, “Firework” has the benefit of an introduction that builds anticipation. When Yoko starts screaming, it offers a kind of tension/payoff that works (for me and clearly others) even after multiple viewings. Someone reposted it to Facebook, where it has 14,500 comments. It currently has 4 million views on Youtube.
This was my first and only experience creating something that went viral. Websites like Fuse.Tv, Buzzfeed, Jezebel, Paris Hilton, hollywood.com, and many others linked to my anonymous video, and I quickly amassed millions of (sadly non-monetized) views. Hollywood.com called me a “comedy visionary”. (Tombstone carver, take note.)
My work was done, but the Internet wasn't. No sooner had I retired from meme-making that I noted other You Tubers began re-purpose the Yoko Ono art piece and set it to a variety of other songs, including “Ghostbusters”, Toto’s “Africa”, “Immigrant Song” and “Stairway to Heaven”. One You Tuber in particular, (a)AndyRehfeldt, has made scores of these videos, without so much as a nod to yours truly. I have no right to complain, of course, having swiped the intellectual property of Yoko Ono myself, but I did recall a line from my grandfather’s favorite play, “The Skin Of Our Teeth” by Thorton Wilder:
“Yes, any booby can fool with it now; but I thought of it first!”
END
“Comedy visionary” https://www.hollywood.com/celebrities/the-yoko-ono-firework-cover-never-happened-and-santa-s-not-real-either-45970307-60230342
https://www.buzzfeed.com/expresident/yoko-ono-covers-katy-perrys-fireworks
Someone like you