Sing Along with Hippo!

The cool thing about this job is that I get to read about tons of fun stuff. Every day I find out about different ways to die, how to bungle a robbery, when to expect the impending rise of our robot overlords or why people in Florida aren’t like regular humans. On bonus days I learn why history is wrong or, more interestingly, why you are. Of course some days provide me with moments of quiet reflection and give me hope for humanity, but those are few and far between so I don’t worry too much about them.

However, some days force me to think about stuff I really would rather ignore. In today’s case, the main topic would be high school choir. It’s not that I couldn’t sing, I could always carry a tune, it’s just that thinking of those days requires me to remember songs from “Hello Dolly” and other bits of arcania that make me want to kill myself. We never sang anything interesting, unless you defined “interesting” by what your 80 year old grand parents snapped their fingers too.

Times have changed.

Choirs, once relegated to the nether regions of hell normally associated with nerds and losers are now being used to pimp cars and make people feel good about themselves.

Others have been formed to give children a bizarre sense of self confidence and make them seem cute, even though their new-found subject matter would give the censors at MTV pause.

Some have found a way to make even to most ostracized segments of humanity, and there is no more ostracized group in the universe than girl nerds, feel as though they are, somehow, hip.

Yet others seem hell bent on taking time honored standards and breathing new life into them, even though they didn’t ask for such a favor and usually suffer from the effort.

Some, despite the best intentions, come off appearing as though they were conceived by drunks on a Tuesday and no adult was around to stop them. That, by the way, is the only explanation for the wigs in this video.

Nevertheless, sometimes people manage to come up with a fun way to use the choir format to re-imagine, not only a song but, an entire genre of music. While are those moments are rare they make the failures worthwhile.

But, every now and then, exquisiteness occurs. The perfect blend of socially acceptable and subversive. A kind of giggly gestalt that just seeps into your brain and refuses to leave. And you realize you’re, somehow, a better person because it doesn’t.

So, as you can see, there is hope for choirs worldwide.

Now, when you see those kids in their robes you can stop making Harry Potter jokes and instead ask them where they’re hanging out these days. After all, if you can hang with foul mouthed sorority babes or their goth dude counterparts, you’re going to be cool by association. And that’s never a bad thing.