Fine, fine. Because no less than seven people messaged me about this YouTube video, here it is, a YouTube video of the happiest Senior Citizens in all of Mainland China covering Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” accompanied by miniskirted musicians playing traditional Chinese instruments.
I’m pretty sure the song is a parody and not a literal translation, only because my shitty fourth grade Chinese comprehension can understand the phrase “I’m very busy” in the song, and I’m pretty sure that line isn’t the original English version unless that’s just a Chinese way of saying “I want your leather-studded kiss in the sand.” (Hey, I’ve been wrong before.) Also, so we’re clear: they’re doing half of the Macarena for choreography. Because if you’re already covering Lady Gaga on television to an audience of a couple of billion people, fuck that, go all the way.
Lest you think it’s only those wacky Chinese making… interesting choices for song covers, let me remind you of The Glory Gospel Singers, a gospel singing group out of New York, doing covers of theme songs from Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli films:
Wikipedia defines gospel music as “music that is written to express either personal, spiritual or a communal belief regarding Christian life.” So obviously, a gospel cover of the theme from Ponyo totally works! All you have to do is replace the words God and Jesus with an animated goldfish daughter of a sea magician. Duh.
And there you go! Maybe we can do an international bad cover song tri-fecta and I can record myself singing a cover of De Colores.
