Watch This! (November 2019 - But like, in April 2020)

Hey! A new video sharing post! If you're wondering about the title, it's because I started this post in November, and then kind of forgot about it. I had so much going on last year that my blog definitely fell by the wayside, but I'm going to try to be a bit more active on it this year. I'm not making any promises, but I am going to try.

And I'm definitely not going to promise more of these kinds of posts, they're probably on the low end of my priorities, but since I had this one started, I figured I might as well finish it. So let's just jump into it!

Since this is April, let's start with a video from this month. Peter Hollens' April Fools video! This was originally teased as a cover of Billy Eilish's Bad Guy, not whatever this video became. But I love a good Rick Roll. 😆



And because Peter Hollens and Lindsey Stirling have consistently been two of my favorite YouTube musicians for most of the past decade, it's only fitting that I start the post with both of them. Lindsey put out a few songs toward the end of last year, but this one was probably my favorite. In going back to put this post together, I listened to it in it's entirety at least 4 times in a row.



Rosanna Pansino is mostly known for her baking videos, but she also can sing! Including opera! This was just a short, one-off video she did last year, but I hope she keeps it up!



Avi Kaplan keeps putting out amazing music. As sad as it was when he left Pentatonix, at this point, I am so glad he did. I really love his solo music.



And speaking of Pentatonix spin-offs, not that he's left, he hasn't, but Scott Hoying has a new project - except he's not actually the one doing the singing! He has put together a kid's choir, and they are really good!



And then of course because I really like Bohemian Rhapsody for some reason, here's their mash-up of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody and Somebody to Love.



I absolutely love it when Postmodern Jukebox does something really out of the box. Their jazz covers of Lady Gaga or Motown versions of Katy Perry are good, but when they do a jazz/tap-dance medley of songs from the Super Mario Brothers video games? I am all over that!



If you follow my video sharing posts, then I'm sure you know how I much I love the music of Steven Universe. A few years ago I made a giant BLOG POST of all my favorite covers of songs from the show. Now, as much as I'd like to do another post like that, I really don't have the time to comb YouTube again, so I will just share a couple covers that came out after last year's Steven Universe: The Movie was released.

There was a ton of great music on the film, it was a full on musical after all, but there was one song that I've played over and over since the movie came out, Other Friends. And soon after the movie was released, a couple of my favorite music cover channels put their own spin on the song, Video Game Remixes and Caleb Hyles. Normally I'd just do one here, but you know me, I love multiple versions of things, so I'm including both. Like most musicals, the lyrics don't make complete sense out of context, but who cares. I love it anyway. 😆





These posts have mainly been a way for me to share music or comedy I really like, but I saw this video and had to share it. It's made entirely out of photographs that people had posted online. It's amazing.



I have loved Pogo since I first discovered one of his Disney remixes back when I first "discovered" YouTube. Last year he did a remix of my childhood favorite film, Bambi, and it was everything I could have hoped for.



Walk off the Earth has come a long way since they started on YouTube, but this video really seems to be getting back to their roots. Specifically their roots of crowding a big group of people around one oversized instrument, and all playing on it together. :)



The Piano Guys did a collab with DoodleChaos, a channel who'd made a couple of classical-based videos I'd seen online, but always on a third party site like Facebook or Reddit, that never gave credit to them, so I didn't even know who they were. I am so glad The Piano Guys reached out to do this collab with them, otherwise I might never have discovered them for myself!



I think that'll be where I quit for now. I could probably add more, but I (re)started this post at the beginning of the month, and I haven't touched it for like a week, so I should probably just get it out there. I won't make any promises about doing another post soon, even a tentative promise like last time, but I probably will do one eventually. I enjoy putting these together, but I have other projects that are taking up more of my time at the moment, so I'm giving my own work priority. And hopefully I'll have some of my own stuff to share soon. :)

Watch This!

So, I've decided to retire my "Last Month Online" series. I've discovered with all the different things I have been doing online this past year, that unless I am only focusing on one thing, I function better, and am more productive without deadlines. If I have a lot of things to do, it is far less stressful to just not have them. I still want to share the best of the internet, but I don't want to force any arbitrary rules on myself.

So I'm starting a new iteration of my content sharing series, that I think I'm just going to call, "Watch This!" I will still try for one a month, but I will not sweat it if I miss one here and there. I am so busy with everything else I am doing online and in the real world, that I don't want to make myself dread making a post, and that's kind of how I felt last month. I have been so busy between my IRL job(s), and my YouTube channel, and getting ready for Christmas, that I haven't even wanted to think about my blog. It would nag at the back of my mind, but I didn't do anything about it, because it was lowest on my non-existent priority list. I thought about doing one last one, since I hadn't done one for November, but I didn't. I didn't even get a Christmas video post done, so I'm just moving on.

So, from now on, any videos I share will just be under the title of "Watch This!" And in future posts, I'll probably include the month of publication. This first post has just some random videos from the past few months, some Christmas stuff too, since there was some great stuff released that I thought deserved to be shared, but mostly just random videos that I liked. As usual.

I'm also going to use this series as an excuse to practice my graphic design skills, and experiment with Illustrator, and I am going to try to make a different logo for each post. Here is the first one.

We'll start this out with a new song from Tessa Violet. I could just listen to her voice/music on a never ending loop. I almost hate myself for what I'm about to say, but her music is, as the kids these days say, "A bop." Urgh. I feel so old using teen slang, but it's just so fitting in this case. :p



Lindsey Stirling released so many great Christmas songs this year, and I hate to skip any, but since the first draft of this post was inching toward 20 videos, I need to cut back to just a couple, so I'll start with this cinematic marvel for "I Wonder as I Wander."



And speaking of artists who put out a lot of content in the past few months, Peter Hollens did even more than Lindsey! I definitely can't include all of his, but I wanted to highlight his best, starting with this collab with his wife and Mike Tompkins.



If you need a little diversity in your holiday playlist, here's a Hanukkah song from Walk Off the Earth! :)



And, not to bring down the mood, but in case you were a fan of Walk Off the Earth, and you hadn't heard, they recently lost one of their members, Mike, affectionately known as Beard Guy. They released this video in tribute to him.



To bring things back up, I have something completely different. Gus Johnson is someone who came across my radar last year, and he is hilarious. His brand of comedy is not always 100% family friendly, but this one was so hilarious, I had to share it. I love a good subverted expectation, and he just nailed it with this one. :D



Next up is another song from Peter- I mean... Ashland!? Ashland Hollens! I remember when Peter and Evynne announced their first pregnancy, and now the kid is old enough to sing! And he's actually pretty great! He is of course joined by his parents, but he really holds his own!



Ugh... I just need a full LSD album already! Sia was already one of my favorite 'mainstream' singers, but this project with Labrinth and Diplo just adds something so different and catchy! I've loved just about everything they've released together so far!



One more Peter Hollens song, this time in collaboration with The Hound + The Fox, and it is amazing!



And one last Lindsey Stirling song to round this out, her original Christmas Song, Warmer in the Winter.

Last Month Online (October 2018)

Yeah, this is late. I've got a lot going on. So much great music this month! Let's kick this off with Peter Hollens, doing a collab that I am kind of shocked hasn't happened before now, with Chester See!



And we'll follow that up with a video from Peter's wife! Evynne is singing one of my favorite Celtic/folk songs, and it is amazing!



I saw this next video on Reddit, and I knew I had to include it here. This is an utterly genius bit of editing work, they took Josh Groban's "You Raise Me Up" and set it to Michael Jackson's Thriller video, which features zombies. It was such a brilliant joke I about died laughing at work. 🤣

[118/118] "Thriller" x Josh Groban's "You Raise Me Up" from r/SharedBPM

Next we have a video from Pentatonix's upcoming Christmas album, which I considered saving for my eventual holiday post at the end of the year, but as you will see, the song is from Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, and the video leans a little more toward Nightmare than Christmas. 😜



And speaking of The Nightmare Before Christmas, The Hound + The Fox covered a song from that movie this month as well!



Not every Halloween-themed video this month was based on this Disney classic though, we also got another song from Pomplamoose and Tessa Violet, mashing up The Monster Mash, with several other thematically appropriate songs. And also some really random choices, like the theme from The Fresh Prince of Bell-Aire? But somehow it all works SO well!



It has been awhile since I've shared a World Order video, but they just released a new video, and it was everything I expect from them. I just love watching them... Dance? Move? Slowly move their bodies completely in sync with each other and the music. 😜



Next we have another amazing video from Jonna Jinton, which is different that any of her videos before! I love this! It's such a great idea for a video!



Thanks to the release of a Queen biopic last month, another trending musical genre beyond the usual October/Halloween, was covers of Queen songs. (Does that count as a genre?) I picked out what I thought were the two most creative examples of the trend, this one from 10 Second Songs:



And this massive musical mashup from Peter Hollens. We'll end with this one, which was probably my favorite song all month. I have replayed it SO many times! It's just so good!

!

Last Month Online (February 2018)

Vids are really random this month. Not that that's anything new. Let's start this off with a Lindsey Stirling video. I still have yet to see the movie this music is from, but I still loved Lindsey's take on it.

This video from Vi Hart is hypnotic and beautiful. You don't have to use the 360º feature, but it is really cool to see what she's managed to do. If you're interested in an extremely detailed behind the scenes, I'll link that here.



I have gotten so sick of hearing this song everywhere on the internet, but wouldn't you know it, Pentatonix has managed, once again, to make a version that I actually loved.



Here's a very random video. I have shown this to so many people. It's just so insanely creative, I love it! I saw this on Reddit, I think it was the day it came out, with only a few thousand views. Once again, this was a case where I said to myself, 'this video is going to go viral.' Sure enough, it went so viral that a few days later my brother was texting it to me!



The video is now at over 2 Million views, and a bunch of those are from me rewatching it. There's just something about this guy that I can't help but love. But maybe not quite as much as my cousin Sasha, who, upon seeing the video, declared that she wanted to marry him. :p

Oh, and speaking of random. Here's a thing. I laughed myself to literal tears, multiple times, over this video. It's not technically from this month, but it was featured in a Try Not to Laugh challenge on FBE's React channel this past month, which is how I saw it. Warning, dark humor ahead. :p



If you were disturbed by that video, here's some amazing harp music as a palate cleanser. :p



Last month I forgot to share Lucas the spider's January video, so here's that, along with February's.



I love this spider so much! I wish all spiders were this cuddly and adorable!



I am so pumped for Owl City's new album! This song is amazing!



And finally, the best video of the month, Peter Hollens has FINALLY covered Bohemian Rhapsody! With an amazing, creative twist!

Bohemian Rhapsody (On Repeat)

I considered making a post JUST for this next video, but I decided to turn it into an On Repeat post, because there have been quite a few amazing covers of this song over the years, and I wanted to feature a couple of my favorites, plus I wanted to see what else I could find, because I'm sure YouTube is full of amazing versions I've never heard before. But first up, the main attraction.

Last month, Pentatonix did something that fans have been begging them to do for literally years. Years! They covered Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody! While I have always LOVED the Muppets' take on this iconic song, I have to say, I think that Pentatonix might have just edged them out. Their version was so amazing! I was cheering, I was clapping, I was pumping my fist, I was basically behaving like a lunatic, and I am so glad that no one walked in on me, because I was IN to this song. I could go on and on about how much I loved it, but I think I've done that enough, you just need to go watch it for yourself.

Wasn't that AMAZING!? Mitch SINGING the guitar solo was probably the point were I first became the lunatic I described above. :p

When I watch the video for the first time and I realized where and how they were filming, I said to myself that I NEEDED them to release a behind the scenes video, and thankfully a few days later they did just that!

I mentioned it above, but up until PTX released their version, the Muppets version was the best version of this song that I had ever heard. It had everything great about the original song, but with 100% more Muppets! It is still so amazing, and still one of my favorite songs and videos of all time. To this day, I still think the Muppet version of the lyrics in my head, especially the end. "Nothing really matters... BUT MOI!!!!!!!!!"

I have a feeling that whenever I do an On Repeat post, Kurt Hugo Schneider will be featured. The guy seems to have an amazing cover for everything, and this song is no different.

Those were my favorite versions, not too many people cover this song on a regular basis, so I haven't built up a playlist or anything. I just thought it would be fun to look around YouTube and see what else I could find. I will say though, one of the problems with trying to find covers of this song is that everyone feels like it's too untouchable to do anything other than a straight up cover, so they all end up sounding too similar. I found a lot of great versions, but nothing that really made them stand out, like the ones I've already shared. Glee did a version a few years ago, Panic at the Disco did a version for last year's Suicide Squad movie, and they were great covers, I really liked them, but they sounded kind of a lot alike. By themselves, they were fantastic, but after listening to a whole bunch of covers in a row, they all start to blend together. Keeping that in mind, instead of just searching for covers, I decided to look specifically for less conventional versions.

So, let's move on to something completely different. I'll bet you've never heard the song like this before. :)

Hey! I just found an AMAZING orchestral version! I love this so much!

I had no idea that the Voca People had covered it! I love them! I love this! Theirs is more of a medley that uses Rhapsody as its framework, but it's still the whole song, and it's still great.

I COMPLETELY forgot the Mystery Guitar Man had covered it back in the day! That man had some of the best videos back then.

Ooh! And here's a really great string quartet version! I love YouTube! Where else could you go to see this song sung by weird aliens, then played on slide whistles and kazoos, and then performed beautifully by an amazing string quartet?

Hold.

Everything.

Weird Al did a POLKA VERSION!?!?!?!?

My life is now complete!!!! I can die happy!!!!! This is so amazing, I have no more words.

I think I'm going to have to end with this one. There is no possible way I can top that! It was just too pure, too amazing, too beautiful! Goodnight everybody!

Bonus Video! I saw this a couple days ago, and I decided I had to include it in this post. I love learning this kind of interesting behind the scenes information.