FOF #585 – My Name is Tay Zonday

Tay Zonday:
Sheltered on a Monday
Wrote on Tuesday,
Recorded on Wednesday,
Posted on Thursday,
Famous on Friday,
Got even more famous on Saturday,
Interviewed on Sunday.
This is the show
with Tay Zonday

Yes Virginia, there is a Tay Zonday and he’s on today’s show!

Today we’re talking to musician and YouTube overnight celebrity Tay Zonday, who in recent weeks has landed himself in the middle of a media deluge over his homemade music video “Chocolate Rain.”

Since the video was posted three months ago it’s received over three point seven million views and catapulted Zunday from an ordinary life as a American Studies grad student to one of the most recognized YouTube video personalities and inspired thousands of other responses and parodies. Why?

Tay Zonday’s video caught on because it’s a great blank canvass for people to superimpose themselves. If the song was directly addressing race it wouldn’t be so much fun to make your own version.

Also, the mismatch of Tay’s voice with his face, his obliqueness and outsider feel adds to the appeal. Like the Mona Lisa, Tay Zonday’s knowing yet emotionally unavailable gaze draws us in further.

Tay Zonday (in this interview):

“Consumerism has reduced participation in our democracy to where we feel obligated to say ‘I love this’ or ‘I hate this’ and there isn’t any more sophisticated public discourse in that binary.”

My suspicions is that Tay creates these videos as therapy for himself, as a roundabout way to express himself to those he can’t speak to directly. Tay Zonday: “the anonymous medium [of posting a video on YouTube] allows people to say the things they want to say to their employer or spouse…”

Join us as we ask Tay Zonday about why he made this video in the first place, his reactions to the publics response and why is it so hard for mainstream journalists to embrace ambiguity. [Digg this story]

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Featured Video & Music:
Tay Zonday - Chocolate Rain

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This entry was posted on Monday, August 6th, 2007 at 11:29 pm and is filed under Interviews, Musicians, Podcast. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.