Don't Download This Song
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| “Don't Download This Song” | |||||
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| Single by "Weird Al" Yankovic from the album Straight Outta Lynwood |
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| Released | August 21, 2006 | ||||
| Format | Digital download | ||||
| Genre | Comedy | ||||
| Length | 3:54 | ||||
| Label | Volcano Records | ||||
| Writer(s) | "Weird Al" Yankovic | ||||
| Producer | "Weird Al" Yankovic | ||||
| "Weird Al" Yankovic singles chronology | |||||
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| Straight Outta Lynwood track listing | |||||
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"Don't Download This Song" is the first single from "Weird Al" Yankovic's 12th studio album Straight Outta Lynwood. The song was released exclusively on August 21, 2006 as a digital download. It is a style parody of "We Are the World" and other similar charity songs. The song "describes the perils of online music file-sharing" in a tongue-in-cheek manner.[1] The song is ironically available for streaming and download (legally) in "DRM-free" MPEG fileformat at Weird Al's MySpace page (96 kbit/s, 22050 Hz), at dontdownloadthissong.com (160 kbit/s, 44100 Hz), and for download at the CNET site Download.com Music (link below).
"Don't Download This Song" references several court cases related to the RIAA and music piracy. Among these are lawsuits against "a grandma" (presumably Gertrude Walton[2], who was sued for piracy six months after passing away) and a "7-year-old girl" (presumably a reference to Tanya Andersen's daughter[3] sued at age 10 for alleged copyright infringements made at the age of 7 ), as well as Lars Ulrich's strong stance against music piracy in the days of Napster. Mention is also made of Tommy Chong's time spent in prison.[4] The song is one of Weird Al's few outright political songs.
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[edit] Track Listing
The following song is including in the digital download:
- "Don't Download This Song" - 3:54
[edit] Music video
The music video, animated by Bill Plympton, premiered August 22, 2006 on Yahoo! Music. It depicts the vision of the capture, trial, imprisonment, attempted execution, escape, and burning of a young boy who burns a CD on his computer.[5] The boy's death, where he stands on top of a tower just before it explodes, parodies the film White Heat, where Cody Jarrett, played by James Cagney, dies in a similar fashion. But at the end, it turns out the boy is just imagining what would happen if he downloaded the song, and goes back to playing his guitar. As he continues his arrest, the video quality decreases from color to grayscale to dark grayscale to yellowed. The style of drawing is similar to that of Schoolhouse Rock videos.
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[edit] External links
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