Read the full music feature: I… love hate love hate LOVE Carly Rae Jepsen…
With close to 345 million YouTube views, the official video for Call Me Maybe is beyond huge. But the song has also spawned countless parodies, covers and remixes. Most famous is the lip-sync version by Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez, Ashley Tisdale and friends that helped break the song, though who really wants to watch other people mouth the words to a track? The Auto-Tuned Barack Obama cover was funny, but not as chuckle-worthy as Colin Powell’s attempt to sing it on CBS This Morning. Best are the actual cover versions performed by everyone from earnest teens in their bedrooms to serious musicians.
1. COOKIE MONSTER
Sesame Street could have changed the instrumental backing track to death metal to match Cookie Monster’s trademark vocals – a missed opportunity. Still, this is disturbingly cute. “The Cookie Monster one is my favourite cover,” Jepsen admits. “It’s quite an honour. I had a big, goofy grin on my face the whole time I watched it.”
2. THE ROOTS, JIMMY FALLON & CARLY RAE JEPSEN
The crossover appeal of this late-night skit brought lots of cool kids on board. A little love from ?uestlove goes a long way toward establishing credibility, and Jepsen’s participation made it clear that she doesn’t take herself too seriously.
3. FUN.
Jepsen and fun. are both tailor-made for Glee, and both have benefited from having their songs featured on the show. Yet fun.’s stripped-down acoustic cover of Call Me Maybe is much less kitschy than expected and injects some surprising urgency and tension into the feel-good track.
4. BEN HOWARD
It must drive the young UK singer/songwriter nuts that his gloomy reworking of Jepsen’s smash is a bigger hit than any of his own songs, but at least he can take solace from the fact that he’s inspired a ton of aspiring British singers to post their own covers of his cover on YouTube.
5. DAN DEACON
The initial online reaction to Dan Deacon’s layering Call Me Maybe’s vocals 147 times was fairly negative, and most people read it as an obnoxious piss-take. However, with a bit of distance, it now seems like something that would work quite nicely in a DJ set if used as an intro to the original. Annoying, but more interesting than it got credit for.
