Bad Lip Reading/WMG

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Bad Lip Reading is really... Ark Music Factory.

Friday wasn't just the most obvious target, it was the most available. Basically the corporate bigwigs behind Ark saw an impending disaster and decided to engineer a big Take That, Audience!, by bringing in some sound-mixing guys who'd been building their experience on Youtube and other places, starting out with a rip on Friday, automatically endearing themselves to the populace, and building up a name with more and more songs. By the time they're done, the placeholder staff at Ark will be long phased out and Friday will be Gannon Banned.

  • Case in point, everything they've done has been given a hip-hop slant (except "Hot Jumping Beans" and "Asian Baby", presumably because said execs wanted more white input to play up Rascall Flatts' redneck angle).
  • Case in point 2: a recent copyright claim to block "Gang Fight" was done in Rebecca Black's name rather than Ark.
  • This would also explain the secrecy: Ark has a bad reputation after "Friday".

All Bad Lip Reading videos take place in a shared universe.

Where the lyrics actually make sense, in context. Probably a low fantasy one, considering the presence of (simultaneously) magic geese, Uzis, hobbits, alchemists, and so on. This in turn opens the floor for some of the singers not to be human, if that floats your oyster.

  • Alternately, the shared universe is the one from an episode of the '80s Twilight Zone, where everybody was speaking in Word Salad English. While the protagonist of that tale was resigned to his fate being stuck in that world and started relearning his own language, it's possible that the power of hiphop can turn this predicament into a force of awesomeness.
  • "Russian Unicorn" could be the exception that proves the rule. Their "real world" makes sense to them but when Michael Bublé snaps out of his fantasy at the end of the video, the cashier is creeped out and you can hear hushed whispers that suggest that even for this universe, what he was singing was strange.

"He thinks monsters are after his testicles!"

The gang fight described by Rebecca Black...

Is between her (and her group) and Miley Cyrus and her (aviator?) 'crew'. Additionally, Black Umbrella isn't the name of a kind of weed, it's Cyrus' gang, and Friday (potentially) is the name of Black's.

  • Ahem. Not 'Friday', 'Barney'. And 'crew' most likely means her band of car customising fanatics.

The "right stuff" is salvia, not marijuana as many listeners assume.

Considering that Miley got media attention for smoking it earlier this year, why wouldn't it be?

Bad Lip Reading is being paid for lyrical Product Placement.

Think of all the brand names that get mentioned in their lyrics, especially food or beverages: "Black Umbrella" mentions Snapple, "Russian Unicorn" mentions Hot Pockets, "Dirty Spaceman" mentions Bacos and Jello, "(Rockin') All Night Long" has Porsche, Red Bull, Tang and Patron, "Hot Jumping Beans" has Ho-Ho's and Frito-Lay, etc. Clearly, after the success of "Gang Fight", they started covertly taking corporate sponsorship offers.

Or inversely, BLR is raising capital to go into their own merchandising.

Those BLR-branded plasma TVs in some of their videos? They might be planning to make and sell real ones.

  • They've started selling actual tshirts now... point still stands, they could stand to build some capital from that.

In "Everybody Poops", apl.de.ap is a Cyborg who is sympathetic to the human cause.

He calls himself "a soft machine man", which sounds a lot like a description of a cyborg if you think about it. He either sides with the humans because he still considers himself mostly human (he does poop, after all) or just because he hates the idea of androids stealing school supplies so much.

    • Alternately, he is a biological machine like a reimagined series Cylon, or a mechanical being with synthetic skin, like a Terminator. Either way, he has deeply infiltrated human society, to the point where he can apparently even poop.
    • Or he is a "Soft Machine man", whose anger at having been kicked out of the band has driven him to an incoherent rage.

In the shared universe of Bad Lip Reading, frozen chicken is frequently used as a weapon.

Rebecca Black is being sarcastic when she keeps asking "Have I brought this chicken for us to eat?" and "Have I brought this chicken for us to thaw?" in "Gang Fight" - she really plans to assault her rivals with it. When Taboo mentions going to watch a chicken fight in "Everybody Poops", the chickens are the weapons, not the combatants. And when Jay-Z says "chicken never hurt me" in "Morning Dew", he's bragging that he's never been defeated in a frozen chicken battle.

  • Yeah, I know that sounds kinda messed up.

Alternatively, the chickens are used as magical weapons of some sort.

That's why Ludacris rescued the chickens and can't explain what they do, it must be kept a secret and only celebrities of their universe are allowed to interact with the magical chickens.

    • However, only magical chickens are off limits. Regular chickens can still be eaten. In "Time to Rock," one of the singers says she likes "Chicken smeared with Funyuns™ — s**t really tastes good!"

"Dirty Spaceman" is actually a breakup song.

A couple lives in space. Based on the chorus's wording, he (nameless, for the moment) probably lives with her (name/nickname 'Angel Mouth').

  • Friction arises in their relationship for a number of reasons. She's racking up a bill from all these Chinese men texting her, provokes Spanish guys into trying to choke her dog, and among other things demands children cooked over easy on Mondays - she may also be The Alcoholic.
  • The last straws come in a pair. Angel Mouth not only eats all of the Jedi Jello(tm), but also lets his frog, Adrian, out of the airlock to die of suffocation/decompression. In anger, she dubs him 'Dirty Spaceman' and he storms out, stopping to take 'the spaceman head' (probably something he had with him when he moved in).
    • Alternately (re: 'spaceman head'), he's just saying she gave him one last BJ and now he's taking off...
  • Angel Mouth eventually seeks solace in the arms of Alejandro, a high school friend. Dirty Spaceman gets a leopard to keep freestyle, possibly as a replacement for Adrian, and drowns his sorrows in ping-pong and paintball until morning, seeking love elsewhere the whole time.
  • 'seed money for the Re-Animator' may point to Dirty Spaceman's future plans (resurrecting Adrian, maybe?). Considering Angel Mouth refers to Alejandro as 'not drunk' emphatically, who knows how long that relationship'll last.
    • Someone needs to write fanfiction about this...

Whoever writes the lyrics to these parodies is either anorexic or morbidly obese.

And that's the reason for the sheer number of references to food.

The reason the voice imitations are so spot-on is because it's actually them.

I mean, it's clear the people behind all this are professionals. And the Nicki Minaj and Will.i.am impressions sound exactly like them... maybe it's the artists themselves having a laugh.

Or, alternatively, at least one of the people involved can actually read lips properly.

  • According to Rolling Stones, this is becoming truth.

The videos are all actually intended to have the lyrics they have in the BLR videos

  • ...and the real songs are really a bad lip reading of the Bad Lip Reading videos. How else could you explain the fact that the songs are all much better than their originals and match the video better (watch "Dirty Spaceman" and "Check It Out" and tell me that the video actually makes more sense for the supposed "real" song it was shot for. Go ahead)?

James Blunt is telling an epic story of revenge in Anachronic Order

James Blunt and his pet bullfrog sell you some wine. They witness you punching a Brazillian orphan. Even the Bullfrog, who is normally emotionless, wants to exact revenge upon you for this unforgivable deed. James leads your dog into a hut and slits its throat, Destroys the submarine your friends are riding in (With help from a phantom), watches them drown in their own blood, and Pushes you on top of your burger and fries. He steals your wallet and buys a lot of good weed, a bottle of milk and a soggy eggshell. He then remembers his old pet owl, who had a strange habit of wearing clothes, and philosophizes that "a Zebra thinks he's half not-black".

A love triangle exists between BLR-Verse Taylor Swift, Wiz Khalifa and Bruno Mars, of which Barack Obama is aware.

In “(Rockin') All Nite Long”, Swift calls herself “a waitress”. Obama, in “Trick the Bridesmaid”, comments on the crown being “for your juicy waitress”. Who has a crown? Mars, who'll “knock you out”. Clearly, Mars intends to invite Swift over and knock her in the head after wine to prevent her from becoming Khalifa's girlfriend, and Obama knows exactly what's about to happen, but is too busy dealing with the famine that Rick Perry mentioned in his campaign video (by stealing food) to help in any way other than trying to discourage Mars from going through with his crazy plan.

The guy behind Bad Lip Reading is Ghost.

Both are Texans. Both are men of a thousand voices. Both are involved in internet culture. If Ghost is a troll, as some suspect, it fits.

Lou McGopher is Adrian the Frog.

He got Angel Mouth to let him out of the airlock, and thus escaped back to Earth where he changed his name to Lou McGopher and joined up with Gotye.