14 DAY TRIAL // There are a lot of people out there trying to create viral videos, but few manage to put on a repeat performance. The Gregory Brothers, known for their Auto-tune the News series on YouTube, have, though, and each new video is better than the last.
Their latest exploit, the Bed Intruder Song became an instant hit getting millions of views on YouTube. It was so popular in fact that the group made a full-length version of the song and put it up on iTunes.
The song was already available on YouTube, albeit in video form, but that didn't stop tens of thousands of people from buying the iTunes version propelling it to top downloaded chart in the Apple music store.
At one point, the song hit the 25th spot and is now the 35th most popular song on iTunes. Quite a performance for an YouTube spoof which is basically just an auto-tuned version of a news clip.
But conquering the digital realm is one thing, the song has now entered the Billboard Hot 100 top at the 89th spot. Based on iTunes alone, the single is now one of the top selling songs in the US.
The video and subsequent song have their origins in a very serious event. Antoine Dodson, the protagonist of the video, rescued his sister from an attempted rape and made the local news.
His flamboyant account of the events made a YouTube video of the news coverage hugely popular, getting several million views before being pulled from the site due to a copyright complaint.
One copy of the original clip, still available on YouTube, raked in close to four million views while another has close to 1.5 million.
Auto-tune the News then worked its magic and created a song around the original video, dubbed the Bed Intruder Song. The video became an instant hit and now has close over 10.6 million views.
There are copies of it as well, one with four million views and another with 1.6 million. It's safe to say it was and still is quite popular.
The Gregory Brothers, who are bona-fide musicians, got to work and came up with a longer version of the song, fit for an iTunes release, which now has about 3.4 million views on YouTube. The brothers are now working on a pilot for Comedy Central.
Bed Intruder Song iTunes version
The original news clip