Obama's Star-Studded YouTube Music Video
Musicians and celebrities are some of the most popular subjects on YouTube, and a new video is tapping that star power to mobilize young voters for Barack Obama.
On Saturday, YouTuber user "WeCan08" uploaded "Yes We Can," a music video for a new Obama ballad by the Black Eyed Peas' will.i.am and director Jesse Dylan, Bob Dylan's son. The "song" was essentially written by Barack Obama, since the lyrics are adapted from his "Yes We Can" speech after the New Hampshire primary. That speech, of course, was inspired by Cesar Chavez's motto for a United Farm Workers hunger strike in 1972. Excerpts of Obama play throughout the video, with accompaniment from stars like John Legend, Herbie Hancock, Common, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Scarlett Johansson, Tatyana Ali and Nick Cannon. The video was first reported by ABC News, which interviewed the creators.
There's no telling if this video will catch on, but musicians have turned political speeches into popular songs before. The most famous example is Haile Selassie's 1963 address to the UN, which Bob Marley put to music in the song "War."
While the Obama campaign had no role in this video, it has run a sophisticated and effective YouTube strategy. It was the only campaign to record a YouTube address for this week's State of the Union, which has already drawn over 850,000 views and is one of the most popular clips in the world this week. The campaign also promotes a battery of ring tones, which splice one-liners from Obama with riffs of music. Young voters can get the items for free by providing the campaign with their cell phone number -- a life-line for organizing a demographic that is rarely listed in party databases.
Ari Melber writes for The Nation, where this post first appeared.
The music video is below, followed by a CNN segment picking up on The Nation's prior reporting on Obama's YouTube's records.
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A truly outstanding effort by a great cross-section of citizens showing their pride in Obama and encouraging people to get out and vote for him. How can that not move anyone? Even those who are for Hillary or the other side.
It was an impressive effort that all can applaud for its passion and style.
YES
WE
CAN!
A song built from Obama's own words...
wow...thank u will...
let's make ourselves proud & change the world.
don't be afraid of the future...it's beautiful!
xx
Amazing what a great musician can do with the words of a great man - Yes We Can! Brilliant.
Some in the media have this theory that Barack Obama is one of those liberal darlings the press love but who ultimately fail to win. Darlings like Bill Bradley or Paul Tsongas or Gary Hart. People with ideas but not the ability to gather votes or withstand tough campaigns.
But we never saw the kinds of inspirational messages, such as "Yes We Can" for those other candidates. We never saw famous people and unknown people bare their feelings as they do in this video. We never "felt" as we do with this candidate.
Others deride feelings as if they prevented us from making logical decisions, of investing our efforts with the candidate with the proven track record or the can-do way of proceeding. But emotions are what make us function in the first place. Without the emotion to want to do something, to want to choose, we could never be rational in the first place. Without the emotion to commit, without the stimulus to commit, we would see ever smaller electorates deciding our future. Apathy is an emotion and so is resolve.
Don't be ashamed to be moved by a candidate. As a college student and then a budding professional during the times of John Kennedy and then Robert Kennedy, I certainly haven't been moved by a candidate -- until this last year -- as I was then.
That video is an amazing political document. I mean, I'm 55 years old and white and fairly cynical. But this is really something new in American politics -- indeed, in American history.
I feel like, if we don't give this man a chance to lead us, we will have blown an amazing opportunity. Maybe it IS a false hope. Maybe President Obama would disappoint us. But just the feeling on the morning of his inauguration ... in every corner of the world ... can you imagine it?
Yeah, that's what I'm talkin' 'bout!
-T
wow... it's amazing... very nicely done.
Yes we can!
that's HOT!!! OBAMA 08
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