Help – I’ve fallen into a YouTube rabbit hole

Did this ever happen to you?

Last night, I was tired so I decided to go to bed early. I climbed into my bed around 9:30 PM with my iPad and headphones to unwind a little bit before turning out the lights.  I began searching YouTube for a video guitar lesson of a song I wanted to learn how to play – Tracy Chapman’s ‘Fast Car.’

I watched an 8-minute video, and was getting ready to go to sleep, when another video caught my eye. It was an a cappella group doing their version of ‘Fast Car.’ So I watched that 4-minute video.

That’s when I fell into the rabbit hole.

From there, I watch an a cappella group, The Vineyard Sound, singing Dion’s ‘Runaround Sue’ (which is great by-the-way). That video was 3-minutes long. I hunted through The Vineyard Sound’s catalog of videos. I watched ‘I’ll Be’ then ‘Signed, Sealed, Delivered’ which was followed by ‘Midnight Train To Georgia’ and for laughs ‘Take On Me.’

By now, I was fascinated by the a cappella groups on YouTube. My next stop was a group from UMass called the Doo Wop Shop.  They have an incredible video of them performing (in a classroom) a medley of songs from Disney movies.

Here’s where it gets weird. About 50 schools have done versions of an a cappella Disney movie medley.  Now I took it as a personal challenge to find the best one, the most original, the most interesting.  I watched as many as I could stand.

It’s now 11:45 PM. And I can’t sleep.

So I switch gears from Disney to a different a cappella favorite, Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody.’ This group has over 3 million hits on their a cappella version. Its pretty damn good.

I ended the night with this version of Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller.’ While it’s not as good as some of the others, you have to give these guys credit for trying.

So if you bump into me today, and I seem tired, it’s because I went to bed early. And fell down a rabbit hole.

R

02.07.13