Ken Lee….Ken Leeeeee!
by Shane on 07/05/08 at 10:23 am
2 comments
Heard of Ken Lee before? I hadn’t until some friends introduced me to it. Say it after me….KEN LEE….KEN LEEEEE!
It’s a classic story of how getting it wrong can sometimes be the best thing you have ever done – Wikipedia explains it best:
Ken Lee (“Can’t live”) is a garbled interpretation of the song Without You, performed by Valentina Hasan, a contestant auditioning for the Bulgarian show Music Idol in February 2008.
Just prior to her audition for Music Idol (the Bulgarian equivalent of Pop Idol and American Idol) Hasan informed the judges she intended to perform “the Mariah Carey song ‘Ken Lee,’”. When she was corrected that the song was called “Without You,” Hasan insisted that the song was named “Ken Lee.” Her performance was intercut with footage of an actual performance by Mariah Carey for ironic comparison. When she was asked what language was the song, she mentioned it was ‘English’. Although she did not continue to the next round of the competition, a video of her performance was soon posted on the web where it became popular in Bulgaria and abroad. Hasan’s extremely broken English, coupled with her yet undeveloped singing abilities, combined to great comic effect, and garnered the video over four million viewings in its first month on the video sharing website YouTube
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RgL2MKfWTo[/youtube]
The great thing about this is that Hasan has started a bit of a movement, people all over the world are singing her version. Her version is way better than Mariah’s and I think she totally deserves the legend status.
Check this out:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWye_8xJTwE[/youtube]
And the official House Remix:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ax3UFs4eGnE[/youtube]
Guys, this is huge – there’s even a website!
(Remember, you heard about it first on Ideate.)
Shane Dryden is the 'Maven' at Ideate. The driving-force of Yuppiechef, Shane loves to write on advertising and innovation. He spots the non-obvious stuff behind the obvious, which seems obvious, but isn’t really that obvious (obviously). View more articles by Shane.
amabacha
May 7th, 2008
A cryptic Ken Lee tweet about 3 hours ago – http://summize.com/search?q=ken+lee – got me reaching for my google toolbar!
Arné
May 8th, 2008
Gr8 find, and we thought Vernon was a phenomenon.