Bad Lip Reading is a YouTube channel that takes film segments, footage of politicians, and music videos of pop songs and writes new dialog to designed to match the lip movements of the people in the video, with little to no regard for making sense. In the case of music videos, they produce complete original songs, and substantial editing of the original video is also involved. They got their start in March 2011 with "Gang Fight", a Gag Dub of Rebecca Black's notorious viral video "Friday", which took a song about having fun on the weekend and made it into a song about gang warfare and chicken. Most of their works execute a similar dramatic shift in style and tone from the original.Thanks to an anonymous interview, we now know that BLR is produced by a single man in Texas, a "music producer, songwriter, and musician," but his identity remains a mystery. His songs are being sold completely legally on iTunes (being original works) but the videos may yet fall victim to copyright claims (as "Dirty Spaceman" and "(Rockin') All Nite Long" already have). A few, like "Trick the Bridesmaid," are based on public domain works and so safe from takedowns.YMMV page here.
"(Rockin') All Nite Long" — based off of "Our Song" by Taylor Swift, featuring Wiz Khalifa. (Posted on an alternate site after the original was removed from YouTube for copyright)
AcCENT Upon the Wrong SylLABle: Although most of their lyrics are quite natural, BLR is sometimes guilty of this, as in this line from "Russian Unicorn":
I want to shave that mustache and then have gelato!
From Black Umbrella:
"I'ma get dumb and bang a wizard!"
Actually Pretty Funny: Michael Bublé loved "Russian Unicorn." Gotye and Josh Hutcherson thought "Kicked Your Monkey" and "Hunger Game" respectively were good enough to pass on via Twitter, and Miley Cyrus actually tweeted "Black Umbrella" to Snoop Dogg.
Judging by the comments, Ron Paul supporters, a notoriously touchy contingent, appeared to have this reaction when he got the BLR treatment. Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry and Herman Cain all loved their videos, too.
Harry from One Direction thought Shadow Pico was hysterical as well, and linked to it on his personal Twitter.
An NFL fan actually made a giant orange peanut and brought it to a Minnesota Vikings game, where he asked Adrian Peterson to sign it. Peterson gladly accepted.
Adaptation Distillation: Some of BLR's videos are taken from more than one song. For instance, "Morning Dew" is taken from three songs, "The Lazy Song" by Bruno Mars, "Alejandro" by Lady Gaga and "Empire State of Mind" by Jay-Z and Alicia Keys
The name "Dirty Spaceman" actually justifies the sci-fi setting) - Black Umbrella is only implied to be a new weed ie. "the right stuff", and we're never certain if the Russian Unicorn, like those left-nut-targeting monsters, ever existed (this may be justified by the whole video being an Imagine Spot).
As a YouTube comment points out, the toxic waste barrels in "Boom Boom Pow" make more sense if they're filled with poop.
"Yeti" takes the cake by adding a Chewbacca outfit to stand in for the titular creature.
"My friends want to shave my behind. They're putting ants into my behind! A parakeet is on my behind!Why are you people clapping?! Thick concrete is up my behind! ...Pikachu!!!"
Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Jim Lehrer tries to touch a butterfly in front of him, not noticing that "Ahmed", i.e. Obama, has fallen asleep.
Auto Tune: Mostly in "Everybody Poops" and "Dirty Spaceman".
Ax Crazy: Clove goes "loco crazy" after Katniss goes out with her boyfriend Brian.
Badass Boast: Wiz Khalifa's "I'm an alchemist, the beat is my base metal." (re. "Rockin' All Night Long")
From Michelle Bachmann: "If I assault you, your arm wouldn't defend you. It's better to not do it."
Gotye's "I'm fighting with ninja gloves"
Mitt Romney's "I'm a hot taco." and "I'm like Judge Dredd."
Jim Lehrer's "Go right off, and I'll defeat 17 bears while you're gone."
Ludacris' "I'm the magic man at the magic school."
Miley Cyrus' "Oh my gosh, there's never gonna be a better Padawan than me"
Wiz Khalifa's "I'm an alchemist, the beat is my base metal"
Bastard Boyfriend: Edward Cullen, in the More Twilight video. He proposes making stew out of Bella's pet rabbit then gets drunk and forgets to buy her Christmas present.
Peter Parker. He eats Gwen's pets, raps about how gross her fake leg is, and threatens to slap her because he hates her food.
Bears Are Bad News: During the first presidential debate, Jim Lehrer warns Mitt Romney that the sofa bears don't know that he can be sent whooshing into space if he were a robot. He then tells Romney and Obama to go right off, and that he'll defeat17bears while they're gone.
Beastly Bloodsports: The lyric "I'm gonna find a chicken fight" in "Everybody Poops".
If the ghetto hobbit with an Uzi is around, that is.
Big Eater: Their Alternate Character Interpretation of Rascal Flatts' Gary LeVox seems to be this. "Hot Jumping Beans" is about food to begin with, but while Justin Bieber mainly sticks to the topic of beans, LeVox keeps bringing up other kinds of food.
Also seems to apply to Rick Perry in his soundbite, where he spontaneously lists food and proclaims that he is "bored by famine."
Obama in Trick the Bridesmaids lists food America has been short on.
The Yeti, who even gets called out on it.
Bob Schieffer seems to have a thing for bacon-crusted rolls, comparing them to crack-filled sandwiches. This is followed by Mitt Romney proclaiming his love for ground meaton spinach and "scum brownies".
Deconstructed with Jacob Black. Apparently, even werewolves have problems with soul food, especially if it's made with porpoise meat.
Give Herman Cain a large plate of McDonald's special, and he'll sing, sing, sing about it.
Adrian Peterson has exotic interests in food which includes egg rolls, cookies, stingrays, and double-sided Scooby-Snacks. He also has a thing for orange peanuts, and publicly accepted an interviewer when she offered one.
Peter Parker ate Gwen's pig, Mr. Peaches, and feathered duck, Ruffles. He likes juicy pork.
Brick Joke: At the meta level - Nicki Minaj brings up the name "Alejandro" in "Dirty Spaceman", and 2 videos later, "Alejandro" becomes the first Lady Gaga video used by BLR.
Buffy Speak: Bella learns about Edward's fish preparation method and says "that's so loser-ly".
Call Back: At the end of "Russian Unicorn", a muzak version of "Everybody Poops" can be heard playing in the background.
Came full circle with "The Walking (and Talking) Dead", which features one scene where Rick and Glen are driving somewhere in a car. "Russian Unicorn" can be heard playing on the car's radio.
Ludacris actually shouting out "Gang FIGHT!" in "Magic Man". The intro for "Gang Fight" can be heard in some later videos as a reverse-Vanity Plate.
And "Magic Man" brings up windmills, right after "Black Umbrella" did.
Crossdressing Voices As noted earlier, BLR is all the work of one man, which means he ends up gag-dubbing with female voices a lot. Though there's probably some studio trickery involved, his female singing voice is pretty convincing.
Darker and Edgier: Songs about fun and partying become songs about gang warfare and drugs. Even songs about love can be turned movie trailers about tribes summoning demons.
Mitt Romney also sees this as a problem, and addresses the issue at the beginning of "More Mitt":
Mitt: So many people are rubbing on their messy parts. It's awful, awkward, and germy. Now come on, people, I mean I know it feels good... but we're embarrassed.
Everyone Has Standards: One of the NFL players likes to kick his cat, but only when she's not pregnant.
Everything's Better with Monkeys: Apparently there weren't enough of them in the "Lazy Song" clips, so Jay-Z brought his own. (re. "Morning Dew").
Inverted in "Beard With Glue", in which a costumed gorilla ate Ben. (Although a gorilla is technically not a monkey.) This might be why Double Take hates gorillas.
Extreme Omnivore: One of the Double Take girls admits to eating a big rock.
Fake Shemp: "Yeti" has added footage of Chris Martin running after the Yeti. Since they couldn't get the real Chris Martin, they used a lookalike wearing his outfit from the video, who is almost always filmed from behind (except for one quick shot incorporating green-screened footage from "The Scientist")
Foreshadowing: One of the things said by Gary LeVox near the end of "Asian Baby", the first BLR based around Justin Bieber and Rascal Flatts' "That Should Be Me," is "Cheese fries, next time," said directly to the viewer. The second BLR based around "That Should Be Me?" The food-themed "Hot Jumping Beans".
The still of Ludacris and his "magic goose" in "Magic Man" (shown right after the "Gang Fight" Call Back). It's shown just long enough to register, but the pause button is needed to make out the funnier details.
Happens again in "Dirty Spaceman", with a reflection of the Dirty Spaceman in the tv screen before it's switched on, and will.i.am edited to look like a pink bunny at 3:23.
Yet again in "Morning Dew," with a monkey appearing on Jay-Z's shoulder at 1:41. The still of Jay-Z edited to look like Han Solo might also count, but it's up for a bit longer than most such shots. There's also a shot around 3:23 where Bruno Mars holds up a picture he drew of a pink ice castle, a green hotdog, and 'three light snacks.'
There are a few quick shots in the buildup part of "Shadow Pico" that shows one of the members of One Direction turning into a vampire.
Matt Birk of the Baltimore Ravens wants to make Andrew Dalton of the Cincinnati Bengals a mai tai. Unless it's a bother.
Funny Background Event: Listen to the background chatter at the end of "Russian Unicorn".
Girl 1: Did he say he drinks fire water?
Girl 2: He thinks monsters are trying to get his testicles.
Now listen to the background music playing in the same scene. It's a muzak version of Everybody Poops.
Something similar is done in "The Walking (And Talking) Dead" - While Glenn and Rick are talking in the truck, "Russian Unicorn" can be heard faintly on the car radio.
Hotter and Sexier: BLR's naughty reinterpretations of Miley Cyrus, Taylor Swift, and Michael Bublé have left many YouTube commenters finding them more attractive than before, despite all video clips being taken straight from the original videos.
Implausible Deniability: Ludacris vehemently denies shooting that hobbit on his mountain, instead blaming "a ghetto hobbit with an Uzi". Although he does admit to using karate on the hobbit.
will.i.am also recounts this tale during "Dirty Spaceman":
All these teenage chickenheads call me all night One that looked like Brundlefly said to me, "Can you leave your wrinkled willie glue inside my ocean, please?" But I didn't 'cause her booty flat, flat, flat Yeah, I'm a genius, trust me it was fully sa-a-aa-ad...
Whoever the song "Beard With Glue" is about. He sneaks off and punches little orphaned Brazilians, and he drowned his friends in blood. He's so bad that a bullfrog hates him and James Blunt hopes he falls on his burger and fries.
Gotye kicks monkeys, has wonderful dreams about strangling people, works with the Sith, and if you don't buy his song on iTunes, he'll use your goat, whatever that means.
The girl at the end of the "More Mitt" video. She interrupts Mitt's speech to call out "I wish you would drown".
Possibly also Mitt Romney himself. He tied up a chicken and gave a whipping to a disabled, he ate Fifi, and he will force spiders and badgers on his enemies. He might also be mildly racist.
Edward Cullen. In "More Twillight", he suggests making stew out of Bella's dead rabbit, forgets to buy Bella's Christmas present, and slaps a fish for some reason, and in the first video he screams at Bella for eating a leftover piece of cake.
Joe Biden said in a debate that "poor people can suck it!". Paul Ryan claims he's made out of ice.
One of the NFL coaches calls himself a jerk because he told a girl to pick up her floor bags because she ain't living in Southeast Asia.
A midget told Lady Gaga to speak with an accent, so she did, just so she could steal his Porsche while he was tied to a stake.
Literal Music Video: Although not strict literal music videos, many of the lyrics are inspired by things going on in the video, like in "Black Umbrella (The Right Stuff)": "Dude's so crazy, he tryin' to sell me hubcaps." and "Please help me down from this swing"
"Kicked Your Monkey" does this deliberately to fill a segment left lyric-less in the original.
"Lines, lines, intersecting. Ooooh, lines, lines, intersecting now with paint."
Little Miss Badass: Rebecca Black is suddenly a lot of bearable when she's singing about paying by blood, making war, gang fights...and chicken.
"I play all the parts and sing all the vocals. Even the girl parts are me. It's a party-trick of mine: I can do a girl voice. I used to call up my friends and speak in the girl voice and they wouldn't know who it was. It's just a thing I can do. But there's also some electronic trickery involved."
Jacob: I'm not good... looking. [Beat] I's just kidding. Yeah I am.
My Name Is Not Durwood: Poor President Obama gets called two different names by two different debate commentators: "Ahmed" by Jim Lehrer and "Percy" by Bob Schieffer. Lehrer also calls Mitt Romney "Matt."
Noodle Incident: It took forever to get a ghost out of Nicki Minaj's house, that stupid poltergeist!
Barack Obama's college had one man who made goats tell time (Trick the Bridesmaid)
No True Scotsman: will.i.am would like you to know that you'll never find a human that steals school supplies. But if you do, let him know who, and he'll beat 'em down.
One of Us: Mitt Romney is apparently quite a gamer.
One Steve Limit: Leaving out the Nicki Minaj bits in "Magic Man" while she gets due focus in "Dirty Spaceman" seems influenced by this trope. Averted with two Justin Bieber videos out (though the second seems like a deliberate followup to the first).
Only Sane Man: In the Newt Gingrich clip, Michele Bachmann comes across as this during the debate.
Parody: (Or satire, depending on your point of view) Either one is protected under United States fair use law and BLR makes an effort to present the video clips differently from the original video, potentially to avoid copyright violations. Whether this works is yet to be determined.
"Gang Fight" fast forwarded through the part of the "Friday" video where Rebecca Black sang the infamous "Yesterday it was Thursday..." lines and goes straight to the rapper in the car, apparently because they didn't write anything for that part of the video. This makes "Gang Fight" about 40 seconds shorter than the original video.
The images for "Everybody Poops" are (until the end) flipped from the original version of "Boom Boom Pow" and the part where Fergie sings "People in the place..." is used twice in "Everybody Poops" so she can be seen singing "When I'm on the pot..." twice.
Clips from rap videos are inserted into "Black Umbrella (The Right Stuff)" and "(Rockin') All Nite Long", both parodies of songs not containing any rapping. Of special note, the clips of Wiz Khalifa come from "Black and Yellow" which actually were black and yellow but have been tinted blue here.
"Magic Man" actually omits all of Nicki Minaj's footage from the original, in favor of the apparently random Bee Gees clips from "Too Much Heaven".
"Dirty Spaceman" is edited so that it appears you are watching the video via a monitor on the ship of the Dirty Spaceman.
It didn't stop UMG from taking it down, though.
Putting certain words on screen may also be an effort to ensure the videos are recognized as parody.
"Russian Unicorn" appears to be the least altered from the original, although it does have the usual BLR trope of putting certain phrases on the screen.
At the other end of the scale, since "Morning Dew" has clips from three videos, it would be the most altered of all the BLR vidoes.
Like "Everybody Poops", "Beard With Glue" flips the original video for "You're Beautiful" (unlike the above mentioned, however, this stays the same for the entire video). It also adds around another 40 seconds to the video by reversing the part where James Blunt empties his pockets, making it look like after he puts everything out, he puts them back into his pockets, and then puts them out again. The video also uses a similar "watching from a screen" technique like from "Dirty Spaceman", except there are multiple screens, as shown in the beginning and end.
"Kicked Your Monkey" does this very subtly, adding a strobe effect to just the border, which melds perfectly with the new Eurobeat sound so you don't even notice it's there at first. The random triangle shapes created by the "lines, lines, intersecting" on the walls also flicker with light in time to a quick series of synth notes (that are also heard at the end, with random paint splotches appearing over Gotye and Kimbra in perfect sync with the notes).
Parrot Exposition: Invoked in "More Twilight" during the exchange about earwigs.
Jacob: An earwig. It's like a rotten potato two people flip.
Piss Take Rap: Attempted by Peter in "Peter and Gwen".
Rule of Funny: The only way to explain the random lyrics that are sung when the video is not currently focused on the singing. For example, in "Black Umbrella", the lines about the Padawan and Tiny Timmy Tokyo both come up when the camera is not on Miley Cyrus' face.
Scatting: Beyonce, for some reason, is doing this at Obama's inauguration in the middle of her Word Salad Lyrics.
Secret Identity: As noted above, the man behind BLR is hiding his real name, reportedly "because he doesn't want the levity of the Bad Lip Reading series to impact his more serious work."
Sequel Escalation: "Yeti" broke new ground by adding whole footage cut from cloth; "Edward and Bella" and "Hunger Games" actually shake off some of the Word Salad Lyrics and manage to turn out continuous back-and-forth dialogue. "Paul Ryan's Video Diary" goes one step further by replacing the background, completely changing the context.
Shown Their Work: Yes, that is a real graph of the inverse cosine in "Black Umbrella (The Right Stuff)".
The new voices for Snoop Dogg. will.i.am, and Gotye are disturbingly spot on. It should be noted that Gary LeVox's ISN'T.
Their Jay-Z sounds good enough that you'd swear it was him.
Their Miley Cyrus voice is pretty darn good too, especially in the talking segments (the diet Snapple part and "And I'm pregnant").
Why is Wiz Khalifa edited into Taylor Swift's video? It might be because the Pittsburgh Pirates logo on the T-shirt he's wearing has been altered to replace the word "PIRATES" with "TAYLOR." But BLR didn't do that. It was shown that way in Khalifa's original video (The Pirate's face was also altered).
When BLR added their own hands to footage of Lady Gaga in "Morning Dew", there was a tattoo of a peace sign on the left wrist. Lady Gaga actually has a tattoo like this.
Hobbits appear again in "Trick the Bridesmaid" (and Obama is a witness for them)
From "Black Umbrella (The Right Stuff)": "Oh my gosh, there's never gonna be a better Padawan than me."
Star Wars seems to come up a lot, since "Dirty Spaceman" has the line "Angel Mouth ate my Jedi Jello". The same song also refers to Gumby, Tina Turner, Brundlefly and a Re-Animator.
And now "Morning Dew" has Jay-Z rapping "I'm Han, you're Greedo." With an appropriately photoshopped picture of Jay-Z. And with a later Call Back in a manipulated Lady Gaga clip.
Gotye joins in the Star Wars love... except he's "working with the Sith".
"Beard with Glue" could also count, being devoid of the usual hiphop flavor.
"High School" starts a new trend by using movie footage.
"Shadow Pico" takes it even further by posing music video footage as movie footage into a Real Trailer, Fake Movie. Also, most of the dialogue is lip read as some sort of foreign-language sounding gibberish.
"THE NFL", of course, is the first-ever reading consisting of sports footage.
Spoken Word In Music: Every song, save for a select few, features a spoken word section, but "Trick the Bridesmaid" is almost exclusively this (save for the chorus).
The Stinger: After every video, a short part of the video is played again, except with vastly different and equally nonsensical lyrics.
I can tell I'm beginning to like Alejandro / He's brave and dapper and NOT DRUNK!
That, or she gets hit on by so many drunk guys that finding one who isn't drunk is something special for her.
Tastes Like Friendship: Adrian Peterson accepts a reporter after he learns she has an orange peanut.
Take That: To the production of "Hot Problems," after the song.
Oh my God, you guys could totally go buy this song on iTunes, and then listen to it in a parked limousine... That'd be so meta!
"The Reason You Suck" Speech: Invoked in "Gang Fight!": "You're no one and it's unlikely you'll have this ... And I doubt that you'll have this ... Now you go away, na na na!"
In "Time to Rock," Double Take "don't wanna disco with your a**"
Mitt Romney gives this to his "son" in one of his debates, saying he had to be like Judge Dredd to fix him up.
Third-Person Person: Justin Bieber, at least at the beginning of "Asian Baby."
Vocal Dissonance: It says a lot that this is averted except (arguably) in two cases - Gary LeVox (voiced similar to Larry The Cable Guy even though his real voice is more like the one used for Justin Bieber here) and Michele Bachmann (whom you'd probably expect to sound like a guy anyways).
Vomit Discretion Shot: Peter Parker throws up over the side of a building right in front of Gwen Stacy, after telling her that touching her wooden leg makes him sick.
is a YouTube channel that takes film segments, footage of politicians, and music videos of pop songs and writes new dialog to designed to match the lip movements of the people in the video, with little to no regard for making sense. In the case of music videos, they produce complete original songs, and substantial editing of the original video is also involved. They got their start in March 2011 with "Gang Fight
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