Web Video / Auto-Tune the News

"Auto-tune the news!
Auto-tune the news!
Everything sounds better
Auto-tuned!"

Songify the News (formerly Auto-Tune the News) is a web series by The Gregory Brothers (and Evan's wife Sarah), under the YouTube username "schmoyoho" (accent on the yo), that consists of taking news clips and applying the Auto-Tune filter to them. Combined with backing vocals, clever editing, masterful tunes and witty lyrics, the result is often Awesome Music. In recent days, shorter songs made using a single source have also become wildly popular; this "Songify THIS!" series seems to have taken over the original "Auto-Tune the News", which seems to have been renamed "Songify the News" for more recent entries.

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Provides examples of

• Analogy Backfire: "Our metaphorical car got no breaks and no gear-shift, we'll go metaphorically far while we're standing in the ditch!"
  • "Bitch!"

• Ambiguously Gay: Elena Kagan, possibly.
  "We're having a conversation / about the implication / of sexual orientation, / a silly allegation / of extreme exaggeration / and pointless information / when it comes to confirmation..."
• Babies Make Everything Better: Michael gave birth to three who are totally capable of singing, playing instruments, and growing beards at such a young age.
• Beat: "This is an awkward silence, I guess I'll fill it with ad-libs."
• Band of Relatives: The group consists of Michael, Andrew and Evan Gregory, and Evan's wife Sarah.
• Brand Name Takeover: In a way, with their own videos. A lot of recent Songify This videos are considered to be Auto-Tune the News videos. "Auto-Tune" is itself a registered trademark, whereas "Songify" is more defensible as a unique trademark.
• B-Side: Obama Sings Kick Ass Song, Bed Intruder Song, Banker's Song - We Didn't See It Coming, Backin' Up Song, as well as many others.
  • "Banker's Song - We Didn't See It Coming" was originally done for an NPR podcast, of all things. It doesn't help that the backing track is the same one used in #13, which in turn uses the same backing track from Weezer's memories.
• Call-Back: The line, "Very Thin Ice," started in #2 and came back in #3 and #8.
• The Cameo: From Auto-Tune the News, we have T-Pain in #8, Joel Madden in #11, and Weezer in #13. From Songify the News, JonTron appears in #8, while Hannah Hart and John Green show up in #10. On top of the News series, Joseph Gordon-Levitt shows up in "Get your money, Turn Gay", Nice Peter in "Muffins In Congress", and Psy in "DJ Play My Song (No Leave Me Alone)".
• Cargo Ship: Andrew Rose and his shoe, In-Universe.
• City of Adventure: Three of the "B-side" vids are from Huntsville, Alabama (bed intruder, strut that ass and Use Both Sides), much to the amusement and astonishment of anyone who has actually been there.
• Comically Missing the Point: The Afghani-Pakistani-US "friendship" mostly consists of Hamid Karzai and Asif Ali Zardari hitting on each other as Hillary Clinton tries to negotiate peace.
  • "Oh my god oh my GOOOOOD! LOOK AT THE TREE!!"
• Couch Gag: Auto-tune the news! Auto-tune the news! (Tragedy/C-Span2/Sarah Palin/Everything) sounds better auto-tuned!
• Credits Gag: The guy at the end of each video always has something minor happen to him, from already saying something he said earlier, to telling the chorus in the background to stop singing.
• Department of Redundancy Department: "The only woman who ain't a man"
  • "I'm an angry gorilla and that makes me angry!"

• Drugs Are Bad: Junkie Einstein refutes this worldview, and uses his senatorial position to argue for exactly the opposite.
• Engineered Public Confession
  • Often without the engineering part. A running gag is "Do you want to buy drugs from me?"
    • "It's still a place that is strictly off-limits." "Not for this G, I just went there illegally, speaking of which will you buy drugs from me on national TV?"
  • "Now they're saying I groped a male staffer! / Yeah, I did! (Um) Yeah, yeah, yeah"
    • "A manly back rub. (JUST A BACK RUB!)"
• Erudite Stoner: Junkie Einstein might be a parody of this type, as the only thing he's knowledgeable about is how to get high (or how not to get high). He holds a degree in biology (that he got because he was caught smoking lettuce), but can't tell the difference between a tiger and a giraffe.
• Exhort the Disc Jockey Song: Subverted in "DJ Play My Song (No Leave Me Alone)," where the DJ keeps trying to explain that he doesn't take requests and that he can't turn up the music any louder without violating noise ordinances. The song is also written in such a way that the DJ’s protestations could be excised to play the trope completely straight.
• Face Palm: Anderson Cooper's interview with one of Pastor Worley's supporters in Muffins in Congress is enough to elicit one of these from the group.
  Hold up, this learned and witty discussion could go on forever.
  Apply your palm to your face and you will feel better, much better.
• Funny Background Event: In one of the short videos, entitled "Sarah Sings with Babies", half of the fun of the video is watching the background to see if Michael can catch the frisbee as he jumps off the dock into the lake.
• Government Agency of Fiction
  • The Federal Commission of T-Pain
  • The Federal Commission of Me
  • The Enhanced Perceptions Committee
  • The Congressional Choir
• Halloween Episode: "This Clown Needs To Be Caught" and "Obama Sings Spooky Scary Skeletons".
• Horny Viking: Bølverk.

• Kent Brockman News: News clips are used in parody contexts.
• Kitschy Local Commercial: "Chuck Testa", "Taxi Dave".
• I Know Mortal Kombat: "Songify the News #16" had a few pundits blame a 2018 school shooting on video games, prompting one of the singers to agree and got into Sarcasm Mode with other game examples. The singer says that playing Madden NFL made him a tight end for the Oakland Raiders, playing Super Mario Bros. made him kill Koopa Troopas, and playing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild made him kill chickens with bombs.
• Insane Troll Logic: Nigel Farage's outburst, accompanied by Frank McGee, Angry Gorilla.
  Angry Gorilla: Our logic and reason have proved you wrong!
  Bølverk: Go back to Douchebagistan, where you belong.
  Angry Gorilla: Don't make me have to start World War III.
  Bølverk: Bring it on; THESE GUNS ARE WMD!
• In the Style of: Keith Olbermann provides the "Most Kanye-Esque Verse" in #9.
• Intercourse with You: #11 ends with a guide to being sexually harassed by your boss.
• It Makes Sense in Context: Anthony Weiner's "THE GENTLEMAN WILL SIT" outburst.
  • The Turtle Fence

• Literal Metaphor: Inverted in Microwaves & Goats, when Drew Ferguson makes a metaphor comparing the Affordable Care Act to a goat being inside his house, which Boogie 2988 takes literally.
• Lyrical Dissonance: "Always Summertime", a song with a very cheery melody, but which is about about how depressed the singer is about how her relationship with her significant other went sour and she finds herself living in the past. Lampshaded in the video description where the song is described as "Cheerful-sounding".
• Manipulative Editing: Both played straight and lampshaded with the Eric Massa interview, where they make it look like he admitted to groping a male staffer (and then right after start repeating that "You can take anything out of context.")
• Melismatic Vocals: For example, "It's the smo-o-o-oke, the smo-o-o-oke..." in Auto-Tune #5.
• Memetic Mutation: invoked The "Bed Intruder" song has been covered in the genres of Metal (both Shred/Speed and Death varieties are represented), Acoustic, Marching Band, and Chiptunes, among others. Doesn't hurt that the original video for it featured a piano cover.
  • There are dozens of videos setting "Winning" to just about every form of media on the planet.
• Mundane Made Awesome: In Auto-Tune Verse, all addresses made to Congress must be submitted in the form of a song, all debate must follow a similar structure to a rap battle, the congressional choir must be present at all times, and the congressional drummer sets the agenda for every session.
• My Friends... and Zoidberg: "iTunes link below. Earnings go to [insert unintentional singer here] and the Gregorys. And Apple."
• Nepotism: Strictly disallowed in New Orleans. Except for family members. And sexy turtles. OW.
• "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer
  • The "smoking lettuce" interlude is so bizarre that a news report about it is added in to show that it really happened.
  • Regarding presidential candidate Vermin Supreme's questionable actions:
  YES: This actually happened. I know what you're thinking, but seriously, this is real.
• "Not So Different" Remark: After 10 episodes of absurd American politics, #11 showed that The European Union has its own brand of crazy as well.
  US POLITICS SEEM LESS LOONY
  American Centrists rejoice
• Ominous Latin Chanting
  • The final debates of both the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections are accompanied by a hooded choir chanting the candidate's names.
  • There is some kind of terrible chanting in "American Carnage" as a new president takes charge. Combined with Bad Moon Rising, Gray Rain of Depression, Red Filter of Doom, Ominous Visual Glitches and Cinegrained film effects, it's easy to tell what Schmoyoho think of this man and his ideas.
• One-Woman Wail: Combined with Scatting to fill an awkward silence.
• Pizza Boy Special Delivery: Joe the Plumber gets around.
• Precision F-Strike: Occasional.
• Pun: "Impeached, then banned from chipotle."
• Quote Mine: "You can take anything out of context."
• Running Gag
  • Very thin ice, very very thin ice.
  • Smoking Lettuce.
  • Accent on the yo.
  • Senator Junkie Einstein (R-South Dakota)
  • "SHAWTEY!!"
• Shaped Like Itself: "The most important part of Auto-Tune the News is auto-tuning the news."
• The Smurfette Principle: A serious concern about the Supreme Court of the United States. Only two ovaries, sixteen testicles!
• Something Something Leonard Bernstein: Of a sort: American Carnage has a few clips of 3 Doors Down's performance at Donald Trump's Inauguration, dubbed over with renditions of other late 90s, early 2000s alt rock standards like Photograph and All-Star with the word "Kryptonite" awkwardly shoehorned in.
• The Stoner: Professor Junkie Einstein (R-South Dakota)
• Super-Speed: Slim Chin, possibly.
• Take a Third Option: Rent: Too Damn High
• This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!
  • Christine O'Donnell lets us know that she's "not a politician and not a witch, bitch".
  • The end of #13 qualifies as well. "Standing in the ditch, bitch!"
  • The refrain in "DJ Play My Song (No Leave Me Alone)":
  "The volume is already at the legal limit; so calm down and let me do my job for a minute, bitch!"
• This Song Goes Out to TV Tropes: Also the ladies, but mostly the Serbians.
• Time Travel for Fun and Profit: Junkie Einstein warns against this, since pot was less potent in the 1960s than it is now.
• Verbal Tic: You'll be on very thin ice, Shawty~!
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Lead poisoning! Ew!
• Wealthy Ever After: Mitt Romney's attitude towards losing the election against Barack Obama. (Technically, he's still rich, but you get the idea; who'd want to take such a massive pay cut to become the President, anyway?)
• I Will Find You: You don't have to come, and confess. We're looking for you.

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Subscribe, and tell us what to songify.
Do your own version and we'll link it if it's super fly.
Schmoyoho, accent on the yo!

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