cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by RuffRyd
A few months ago when I first heard the song “Call Me Maybe” by Carly Rae Jepsen, I thought it was, if anything, annoying with some weird lyrics. In the last few weeks though, I have kind of become addicted to it as I have heard it in so many different voices and genres. I saw this article talking about all of the different versions that have been remade of the song and posted on YouTube:
The infectious track about a girl with a crush was labeled the “perfect pop song” by Emma Carmichael at Gawker, who calls it “maddeningly addicting.” (Watch the music video here.) Already, it’s inspired a host of lip-synched viral video covers — starring unlikely crooners ranging from the Harvard varsity baseball team to James Franco — and has inspired unique clips starring the likes of Jimmy Fallon and President Obama.
After watching a few of these, I decided to put a sample of a few of them together for a presentation that I recently delivered and here was the result:
What was extremely interesting about all of these remakes of this song, was that it has seemingly inspired the original artist to put together a remake of her own song with Jimmy Fallon, which at this point, is almost at 6 million views.
The circle continued and while I was actually in Australia, I noticed a Sesame Street remake of the Carly Rae Jepsen remake which is actually quite hilarious.
The learning and the creating seems to go on and on, and probably will not step for a long time. But with all of this, who in the end wins?
Well actually it is simple.
Everyone.
The consumer gets to enjoy some top quality content, or some hilarious parodies and may be inspired.
The people remixing the work benefit because they have the ability to be creative and share their work with the world.
And ultimately, the creator of the original content wins. Big.
I remember that I did not even like this song until I saw the Jimmy Fallon version, as I felt a connection to the musical instruments that were being used from an elementary classroom. Before then, I simply found the song annoying. But as I saw different versions, the song seemed to get stuck in my head, and gained more notoriety, or even popularity. By shutting down all the new versions, what would the artist gain? Less people would hear her song and ultimately, it would actually make less money. It would have perhaps also stifled the creator of the original content.
Would this song have been as big if alternate versions weren’t created and shared? I highly doubt it.
Organizations and schools need to learn from this. Where sharing exists, innovation flourishes. Everyone wins.
I saw this David Wiley quote before, and it states the following:
If there is no sharing, there is no teaching.
To actually build upon that, I would make one simple tweak that the process of all of these remakes reveals to be clearly evident.
If there is no sharing, there is no learning.
How do we as schools learn from the openness of the web and how sharing actually promotes growth of all those involved?
