Chocolate rain may not be as delicious as it sounds, but it’s sure getting a lot of attention.
The hottest YouTube hit of the summer is “Chocolate Rain” by Tay Zonday. The jaundiced-cast video features a fresh faced young man by the stage name Tay Zonday hypnotically singing to a repetitive midi riff about what appears to be a song about racism and social injustice.
As of this writing the video has been watched over 3.7 million times in a period of three months. For comparison, the CNN/YouTube debates gathered 2.7 million viewers.
Why are so many people fascinated with this video?
Tay Zonday’s video has caught on because it’s a great blank canvass for people to superimpose their own version. If the song was directly addressing race it wouldn’t be so much fun to make your own version.
Some of my favorite “remixes” include the McGruff Crime Dog puppet perfectly recreating the video gesture by gesture and a video game version set to vintage “8-bit” rendition of the song.
People love the wacky way Tay Zonday’s voice doesn’t match his boyish face and the naive captions he puts in the video to explain what he’s doing: “**I turn away from the mic to breathe in.”
It’s obliqueness and innocence is part of it’s appeal.
Like the Mona Lisa, Tay Zonday’s knowing yet emotionally unavailable gaze draws us in further. What IS he trying to say to us? What does Chocolate Rain really mean?
Join Amanda Steinstein, Marc Felion and me, Fausto Fernós as we talk about when religion goes too far, Judy Gold, Jewish culture and the couple that has had 17 kids. Ouch!
Lance Bass is coming out, with a new book that is. We think it will do pretty well despite the lack of public interest in “recently out of the closet” celebrity based books because lets face it, everyone wants to know if there ever was any sexual tension between Lance and Justin Timberlake.
Join us tomorrow as we actually TALK to Tay Zonday over the phone about his overnight success and what it means to him, why he doesn’t want to be pegged down and what his vagina would say if it could write it’s own monologue.
As delicious as it sounds- Feast of Fools.
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Tay Zonday - Chocolate Rain
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5 Comments
Comments
Just for clarification, that Ozone song you were talking about was not called “Mayia hee” or however it’s spelled.
It was called Dragostea Din Tei.
Amanda makes a fantabulous dominatrix…grrrrrr
Glen and I had a great time at Judy Gold’s show with Amanda. During the show Judy explains something for the 2 non-Jews in the audience. That cracked me up because that was Glen and me. Although I think the theme of the show about mothers is universal and touches everyone. If Judy Gold comes to your town go and see her. If you go to Chicago look up Amanda, she is so cool. Thanks Amanda.
Leave it to Amanda to have a great one liner for a person who cuts their own hand off…
“If there’s no cock, use your hand.”
LOL
I’ve voted today, HAVE YOU!
I love Amanda! Great lady!
You guys spent like 20 minutes talking about how everyone has to vote. I think we get the message after the first five. Totally cut in on Amanda time!
I’ve voted though!
P.S.
Your birthday thing for profiles shows the wrong age. I turned 16 in June but it says I’m 15 still, probably because it only looks at the year or something.
Who does the chocolate rain fall for? It falls for thee.
I VOTED TOO!!!
Nobody calls it “Dragostea Din Tei” Its the “Miyahee Miyaha Miyahaha Song”
New York city is the same way with the area codes, when calling inside of the city, from inside the city, you still have to dial the area code. Next door or cross town.
Stay tuned tomorrow to hear Tay Zonday in his own voice talk about the phenomenon of being an overnight YouTube star.
It’s the same way in the 310 area code (parts of LA, Santa Monica, South Bay) because earlier last year they added an area code overlay, meaning there are two area codes for the same area. Supposedly they ran out of 310 numbers…
And I’ve noticed here in Pittsburgh that I have to dial the area code when I make calls.
That Chocolate Rain video is like crack… it cracked my ears open and stayed there for about six hours afterward.
Loved today’s show!!! When the three of you get going, it’s so much fun to listen. There are so many potential sound bites from this show… You could do a whole slew of “Mini Bites!”
Chop them up and feed them to us Rick.
Woah there, Matt H! Think of this as the time of year when the public radio station asks you to donate and offers you a tote bag. The Feast of Fools is free. Recording the show takes over an hour, and writing show notes and editing it takes Fausto four times longer than that sometimes. On top of that, there’s guest booking, and getting all those crazy people (Amanda, Ronnie, and Sal-E) to work for free. So I don’t mind if the boys ask us one time per year to go and vote, because they’re not in this to make big bucks — they’re in it for a little recognition. And the People’s Choice Podcast Awards are the one chance they get for some serious recognition.
Vote vote vote!
Kevin Smith, the actor who played Ares in the Xena/Hercules shows, died in 2002 while shooting a film in China
http://imdb.com/name/nm0808963/
but yes, he was the hotness
Amanda, I love that you came up with Golda Meir as the ultra-Orthodox Jew you knew, since she was a secular socialist (who grew up in Milwaukee). Also to answer Fausto’s question, the Jewish accent comes from mostly from Yiddish, the language spoken by most Jews who came to the U.S. during the great wave of migration form about 1880-1920. That mixed with general New York dialect is what you hear now.
And it shouldn’t be a surprise that “Hey! I’m gay!” books are such poor-sellers. Have you tried reading one? Standing in the Borders checking out a couple from the list was painful. And if you are writing a book about being gay *after* your career tanked (in politics, sports, music, whatever), it reeks of desperation and people can smell it.
I decided to create my own version of Chocolate Rain after listening to today’s podcast… I hope you guys enjoy it!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUC_V92M5fA
Whoa!.. I hadn’t realized that was Amanda on the picture as a dominatrix! lol.. she looks scary/kinky/and a whole lot of fun all at the same time, Que nice..
And just voted by the way.
The only reason you have as many shows with all these people is because you guys voted last year. If you enjoy the shows vote!
Actually, quite a LOT of people call it Dragostea Din Tei.
And the “Maiyahi” name is NOT one of the names the song is known by, either.
It’s either called “Numa Numa” by people who don’t know the title, or “Dragostea Din tei” seeing as how it’s the actual name. So HA!
Bravo Steven!
Loved the opening theme. I’d love to get cheese as a gift… I likes cheese!!!
Chocolate rain just sound so nasty (and I don’t mean the song – HA!). Although… I saw the comments on the youtube clip … not very friendly.
oh… and as for matt h’s comment… he makes a good point, getting told to do something over and over again gets really annoying. That being the case, new people start listening to the show everyday, so the instruction to vote is for them (and those of us who need the reminder) and not for the rest of us.