College Athletes Make “Call Me Maybe” Cover A YouTube Trend
Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe" is perhaps one of the most heated songs this summer. When a song gets popular, you would expect to see a lot of parodies and covers on YouTube. This time, the most favorable covers are made by college athletes.
Harvard Baseball Team first made a cover on May 6 on their way to a game. The team did lip-sync and choreographed some arm movement in the van. The athletes' serious, monotonic facial expressions and the fact that one guy really slept through the entire event in the back of the van made the video possess a unique humor and became an instant hit on YouTube. It soon inspired a lot more college teams to create their own parodies in response to Harvard. Perhaps covering "Call Me Maybe" has become a perfect kill-time activity for the athletes while on their way to an away game.
In addition to Harvard, the University of North Carolina's baseball team, Texas State, as well as many other college and high school sports teams have taken the van ride chance to make their own versions of the dance move. Among them was a video made by the women's rowing team from Southern Methodist University (SMU). What is so special about this cover is that the women athletes, instead of using their arms like the people in other covers, used their feet to do all the moves--pretty much like doing water ballet. In other words, the van was moving, and the athletes were all upside down with blood rushing to their head while making all these amazing movements according to the music beats.
On May 17, the Harvard Baseball Team and the SMU Rowing Team were invited to the NBC Today Show to compete for the best cover of the song. The event was more like a party celebrating the young college athletes' vibrant creativity.
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Xiaomeng Li earned her Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude, with Honors in Mass Communication and Fine Arts at Wilson College, Chambersburg, PA. She is now a Master of Arts candidate for New Arts Journalism program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). Born in Wuhan, China, Li came to the United States in 2007. Her passion lies in popular culture, cross-cultural communication, and the relationship between the Chinese government, mass media and the civil society. Li is also an aspiring photographer who likes portraiture and the traditional darkroom experience.