(Aside: 3 posts in 1 day? I know, it’s a regular explosion over here!)
Ah. Scott Adams. The dude is simply amazing.
For those out of the loop, Scott Adams is the creator of the famous “Dilbert” cartoon strips. But unless you subscribe to his blog, you probably aren’t aware of just how damn hip this cat is. Subscribe now, seriously. Politics, sex, humour… anything is fair game there.
And it was with interest that I read this post recently, where Scott invited his readers to make up a song by all contributing lyrics. As he said:
Recently I discovered I am a talented lyricist. This came as a big surprise to me. It all came together when I realized most songs I enjoy are gibberish. I can TOTALLY write gibberish!
For decades I believed my favorite songs revolved around deep thoughts artistically embedded in metaphors and allusions. It turns out they were gibberish.
My first hint came after reading an interview with Paul McCartney. He admitted that most, if not all, Beatles songs were random words and thoughts strung together. I refused to believe it. So I checked online and read some of the Beatles songs. Holy crap! Gibberish!
The rules were simple.
1. Write no more than two lines.
2. Your lines should be grammatically correct.
3. It should sound like it might have deep meaning to someone else.
4. Avoid klunky sounding words. Velvet is good. Cholesterol is bad.
5. Specify whether your lines are a hook or just part of the regular lyrics.
6. It should seem to be part of a story about life or love but not too specific, so they can all be strung together later.
Knowing the Dilbert blog readers, I knew this would be something special. So, it was with no surprise that when I read the follow up post, “The Hit Song You Wrote” – with the strung together lyrics – it turned out that the exercise had worked. The lyrics were nonsensical to the max, but if you thought hard enough about it, you could convince yourself that there was some hidden, deeper meaning behind them.
And then German band Rivo Drei came along. They have two things going for them. 1) They read the Scott Adams blog. 2) They are obviously very sharp marketers, because they were the first to record the song and submit it to Scott for publicizing on his blog.
Rivo Drei – She Amazed Me (The Dilbert Sessions)
It may be a nonsense song, but it’s ridiculously catchy. And I think that this song is going to expose Rivo Drei to an amazingly large audience. Nice one guys.
Listen. Love. Support.
Listen: Rivo Drei – She Amazed Me (The Dilbert Sessions)
EDIT: mp3 link removed. Oliver from the band has let me know that they are hosting the song themselves on their site, and would prefer keeping all the downloads tracked in one place. So head here (http://www.rivodrei.de/musik/RivoDreiSheAmazedMe.mp3) to download the awesomeness that is Rivo Drei!
I’ve taken a look around their site, and there’s some seriously cool stuff there. Unfortunately all their lyrics are in German, so it’s a bit hard to understand, but there are still some kickass tunes. And these guys have some seriously cool music videos too. I’m quite a fan of this one below.