"Call Me Maybe" Cover Idea

According to the Mashable Entertainment article, the insanely-catchy, pop summer song sensation, "Call Me Maybe" by Carly Rae Jepsen has past 100 million video views on YouTube.  I will only link to the video, because you have likely heard it if you are near a radio, tv, or internet program.  We first heard the song watching our friend Michele Murray's Camp Chula Vista camp videos as the campers were making a funny parody; we heard it the next night watching a replay of America's Got Talent from NBC.com -- that's all it took as it hooked into our subconscious.

To make matters worse, while looking through some Linked-In story links, I came across the Mashable article linked above, and that led to the discovery of the gazillion covers of the catchy-little tune.  At first, we watched a few of these in disbelief that this song could spawn so many different versions.  Several were straight covers, even just lip sinking, but there were a few that put their own stylistic spin, even "mashing" other pop songs within their cover.  Here are a couple of the more interesting versions attempting to win the "Call Me Maybe Cover Contest"...

Toronto's big talent--great voice, unique arrangement

the guy Max is talented and provides unique arrangement

he has dubbed and layered this arrangement on his own cpu/keyboard

straight cover, but talented teens sing and play their own instruments

straight acoustic cover -- by a 10 year old!

a much more rocking', guy-friendly twist

goofy guys creatively merge the Cover with another of Maroon 5's hits

As we continued to watch, we were once again amazed at how much young talent there is out there, all trying to breakthrough to their own music stardom.  As mentioned before, our kids are huge "America's Got Talent" fans, and each year we watch as children, teens, and young adults come on stage singing and playing their hearts out, in a chance for a million dollar prize or to be noticed.

Youth and young adults since the 1950's have pursued superstardom by way of a garage band.  I once came across a business card of an "English-style-rock band" that my dad was in during his high school years!  But today, the opportunity of these reality show competitions (Idol, AGT, X-factor, etc.), as well as YouTube and internet competitions, have led to an explosion of this young pursuit to fame.  And, nobody can underestimate the influence of the "Mickey Mouse Club", and the resultantly spawned "Disney Channel", in creating the pipeline of teen and now pre-teen pop superstars.  Not only has this led to the likes of Justin Timberlake to Selena Gomez, they have inadvertently inspired and given similar hope to children all over to raise their voice, pursue their talent, and take a risk.

As we watched videos like the ones above, I thought, we need to encourage our church movement's national youth ministry to do something similar.  We've seen first hand the hundreds of amazingly talented youth and young adults in the Church around the world.  And, our church movement has always been known as a "singing church" with a rich musical heritage.

Why not encourage some creative "covers" of some of our most beloved songs by our youth?

Right now, the North American Convention is kicking off in Anderson, IN, and next month the biannual International Youth Convention convenes.  That gives two years to work out the details and make this work before the next IYC.  Here's the idea:

• Pick 2 or 3 of the Church's favorite songs.  
• Encourage youth groups to cover one of these songs, bringing new life, beats, arrangements, and voice to the lyrics and melodies.  
• Post the videos on YouTube and link to the IYC website for voting--allow votes to only be cast by a corresponding IYC registration number that can only be used a certain number of times; further, to prevent large churches from dominating the competition, block the registration codes from voting for their church's Cover-entry.
• The prize: Up to 5 paid (reimbursed) IYC registrations, and, the chance to perform their version of the Covered song during an IYC service.  Post winning performances on the ChoG website.

Come on ChoG & IYC, figure out a way to tap into all the youth and young adult talent that we have waiting and watching others apply their talents to secular pursuits.