Katy Perry’s “Dark Horse” is getting a second life — well, twenty ten-second lives — in different musical genres. 26-year-old musician Anthony Vincent uploaded a video to YouTube that reimagines “Dark Horse” in the style of 20 different singers.
Vincent didn’t change the lyrics to “Dark Horse,” but his spot-on interpretations of the song as sung by Kurt Cobain, Michael Jackson, Slipknot, Metallica, Pavarotti, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Run D.M.C. and more are possibly more entertaining than the original song. His post earned an article from Rolling Stone . As of this writing, the video has received more than 2.8 million hits on YouTube.
Vincent created the "Dark Horse" video as a way to promote his company, Ten Second Songs , for which he writes and records custom songs for special occasions, Rolling Stone reported.
I’ve been trying to find a niche on YouTube for a very long time and I think I finally found it…. I came up with the idea last November and wanted to do this with [Miley Cyrus’] “Wrecking Ball,” but it was too late, I wanted to pick the most random styles you could imagine. I listened to ‘Dark Horse’ and after I heard it, I immediately thought, ‘This is it. This is the one.’ And I got to work.
Vincent’s original idea to to split the track into different genres, but eventually settled on recording it as a variety of artists. He compiled a list of many different singers before narrowing it down to the 20 on the video. The Bee Gees and the Beach Boys were among those who didn’t end up the the final cut.
He recorded all of the music in his production facility about 30 miles outside of New York City. Though the “Dark Horse” video looks like one long cut, it’s actually a mix of clips spliced together during his downtime. There are no immediate plans for a follow-up, though Vincent told Rolling Stone he likes how people are discovering new music through the video.
I love that people are having conversations that are involving Frank Sinatra, Type O Negative and Tech N9ne at the same time…. If I’m in any way responsible for having some 14-year-old girl Google ‘Type O Negative,’ that’s crazy.
“Dark Horse” has also been a huge hit for Katy Perry. Billboard wrote that the song helped her claim the most weeks at number one on the Billboard chart as an artist. She surpassed Mariah Carey’s 45, and is far ahead of Pink and Rihanna’s 32 weeks each.
“Dark Horse” has stayed popular despite some claims that the original video portrayed blasphemy to Muslims, as Inquisitr wrote last month . Perry also claimed that the song has been a real dark horse all along.