A buddy of mine hipped me to these literal videos a couple of months ago. They’re pretty much uniformly awesome, and have become a viral sensation (I sound like such a tool using the words “viral sensation”.
I guess it’s not the same person that does all of them-I’ve seen them come from a couple of different YouTube users. Essentially, someone had the idea to replace the vocal track on some iconic music videos with a very literal translation of what’s going on in said clip. They set it to the original song’s melody and had someone approximate the singing voice of the original performer. I’ve gotta say, whoever puts these together is quite talented in much the same way that parodists like Weird Al Yankovic are. It must be quite difficult to match brand new lyrics to an already established melody.
These also serve as a reminder of how nonsensical (and unintentionally hilarious) some of the classic videos of the MTV-era are.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj-x9ygQEGA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsZ-BMKVbSc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFYdNuHoG0c