Culture jamming is where it’s at: morphing the news into a Billboard hit single

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At the turn of the decade I selected Culture Jamming as one of the top 10 trends of the 2010s.

We have a fantastic example of that in the Auto-Tune the News series from members of the Gregory Brothers band. These take actual TV news coverage and use auto-tune to create songs.

The latest song in the series, Bed Intruder (below) has hit #25 on the iTunes top sellers, and solely on that basis (since that is the only way the song is distributed) it is now ranked as number 89 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Here is the original newsclip on which the song was based:

And here is an example of their earlier hits in the Auto-Tune the News series:

However the latest effort far transcends the earlier videos. The Gregorys are sharing the proceeds 50/50 with Antoine Dodson, the auto-tuned star of the clip, who is undoubtedly doing extremely well out of his performance.

I am sure this is the vanguard of a rich and broad seam of remixed news and current culture. Bring it on!