How to get YouTube famous with a fake Creed cover

by Josiah Hughes

January 17, 2013

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Back in 2007, the world was a different place. Still-alive Steve Jobs issued the first ever iPhone. Daniel Day Lewis was gaining accolades for portraying an oil tycoon, not a former president. No one knew who Psy or Riff Raff were, but they all still cared about Sufjan and the Black Lips.

For me, it was the year that I was working from home in Vancouver, helping an inventor ghostwrite his still unpublished memoirs (for real). Of course, when you’re an immature manchild getting paid to work from home, you’re bound to get distracted. And did I ever get distracted.

This was only two years into the existence of YouTube, so the idea that people could upload videos was entertaining enough, but the real gold was in the world of cover videos. Long before supercuts of “Call Me Maybe” or Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber were discovered, the Tube-scape was packed with acoustic-guitar toting assclowns in soul patches, offering up their cornball take on Gnarls Barkley (it feels so gross to type out that band name in 2012) or “Hey There Delilah.” (WTF was wrong with the world back then?)

That became my hobby. Once my wife would go to her real job like a sucker, I’d get a coffee, do some work for my wacky inventor boss, and then go Tubin’ for the best worst song tributes. There was something so depressing about those covers. Back in 2007, everyone had the shittiest web cam, making these look more like a terrorist video from Homeland or something suitable for the closing credits of Paranormal Activity.

Then there’s the fact that you’ve got a lot of hubris if you’ve decided to perform a “stripped down” version of an over-produced pop song with an acoustic guitar. Enough so, in fact, that you’ll probably take every possible chance to show off your goosebump-inducing trills, sexy guitar face or, worst and most simple of all, the knowing, “I’m so clever” glance at the camera.

To see what I’m talking about, here are some vintage covers of GnarBar’s hit “Crazy,” filmed in laundry rooms, bedrooms, and sad basements across North America. Everyone’s offering up their own moronic tempo, slapping the guitar strings like a coffee-shop douche, and delivering the chorus in their own unique way, each clip offering its own special blend of melancholy. Also, is it me or is guy number two from the Barenaked Ladies?

That’s just a small sampling of 2007’s coversphere. It’s not like the highly competitive YouTube of today, where the best videos get enough views and likes to ensure that they’re on the front page. This was an ugly, pixelated mess of funky vocal tricks and, presumably, funky smelling dwellings.

An entire beast onto themselves are the myriad videos of shitty bands covering actual songs, of which there are MANY worth digging into. But that’s another story for another day.

Another aspect I’ll touch on briefly before the grand finale, however, are the lonely souls who decide that they’d rather focus in on one aspect of a song than cover the whole thing. There’s a chance they just love their instrument of choice more than anything else, but I have a sneaking suspicion that they go to sleep at night expecting to wake up to countless requests to join a touring band.

The results might be a lonesome, earbud scream attack, or a teenage girl crushing some Blink-182; there’s no shortage of single-instrument videos.

My favourite, however, has to be YouTube user dew1403, an adult pop-punk kid living in Seattle. For the last six years, my dude dew has been uploading videos of himself sloppily covering the classics from Blink-182, Fall Out Boy, Green Day, MxPx, and even 30 Seconds to Mars. Occasionally he’ll take a break to offer eight-minute guides to applying guyliner or making your hair “emo or scene,” but the rest of the time it’s all bass, all the time.

There’s so much I love about these videos. For one thing, he owns a seemingly infinite number of basses and pick guards. Second, the songs he’s playing are so absurdly simple that he’s often just making eye contact with the camera while he plays single notes (and more often than not manages to miss his cues). The setting is too perfect; he’s either jamming it out in his bedroom, in front of an open bathroom or, most recently, in the driveway. Dude clearly lives at home with his parents, and occupies that sweet spot between depressing and hilarious that I can’t help but be obsessed. Someone invite dew1403 to join your band.

Then, it happened. I didn’t know what trolling was, but I became so obsessed with YouTube cover stars that I needed to become one with them. I became Josh Hewiss, a sad and pathetic (but gag-inducingly earnest) college student hell-bent on telling the world about his love for his girlfriend, Angela. I registered the account joshandang4eva, and, on February 16, 2007, I uploaded my first cover.

I wish I could say the pile of filth around my computer was something I added for full effect, but that pile of filth is still around my newer computer as I type this. I did manage to find a “normal guy” hat in the closet (my in-laws gave it to me after a trip to Italy), however, and I thought that appearing shirtless would offer the right amount of “all of me” sincerity that the video required.

Somewhere on an old hard drive, there are outtakes of me bursting out in laughter as I tried to sing Creed’s “Higher” with a straight face, particularly since I was reading the lyrics for the first time as I sang them, so as to increase the clip’s amateurish quality. After a while I finally nailed the 4:26 video. I didn’t show any of my friends, and slowly I amassed some incredible comments.

While those meanies were hilariously predictable in their responses, I was more saddened and confused by the many people who actually liked this. Worse yet, there were girls who actually wished their boyfriends would do this sort of thing for them.

“awesome guitar work,perfect song, and as for the singing not as bad as you think, bet your gf loved it!!!” said Daniel Carter.

“Dude your great! Really,don’t listen to those twats…At least you had the balls to put your vid on youtube.Good job!:-)And to whoever DjAfternoon is just go fuck youself you probably can’t sing worth a shit I could sing with my ass better than you!!!” added urarejret, in response to a user’s comment that appears to have been deleted.

“you’re a good bf,” suggested Tim Bryson, to which drick5493 added “i agree he is.
all the guys below would never even dare to do this for their girlfriends never mind post this on youtube.”

Remarkably, even a user named Hitler1212 came to my defense, saying, “i dind see any of you FAGGOTS giveing it a try fucking losers…you did fine dont lisen to any of thes losers.”

The response was overwhelming, and it became a new regular hobby to check in on my video and see how many hits I had accrued. A few months later, on June 29, I uploaded my second video. But Josh Hewiss was not the kind of guy who has a clue what bands are called. So the video is simply titled “shrek all star cover.”

I decided to wear a shirt this time, so as to shield the world from my fatty whale blubber, but I had to keep it sexy for my (fictional) girl Ang, so I wore a half-open Walmart button up and, for the first time since Grade 7, filled my hair with product. I also wanted to go for a more “rockin’” vibe, so I used an electric guitar. The response was about the same, a solid mix of hilarious and predictable hate speak alongside some very depressing words of encouragement.

User DigitalNinj4 tried to go all Coach Taylor on me, offering words of encouragement like “it was alright, you can practice more and you’ll get better.. don’t give up.”

“ive tried making videos and its really difficult, especially when you keep messing up. so props,” said j0e14.

My favourite reaction to this video, however, came from French user skoonx. On the actual clip, he wrote “fucking bullshit,” but privately he made sure to send me a message about just how much I sucked at covering Smash Mouth. I assumed he hated the band, but then I went to his page and found this:

I had a lot more plans for the joshandang4eva account. I was going to propose to her on camera, playing a U2 song or something. Then, the next clip was going to be life after Ang, because she was going to say no. Eventually, Josh Hewiss would’ve seen Garden State and gotten into vanilla indie music, covering songs by the Shins and the Decemberists.

None of those plans ever came to fruition. But along with GnarBar covers and dew1403, I’ll always have Creed’s “Higher” and Smash Mouth’s “All Star” in my back pocket whenever I feel the need to revisit the Josh Hewisses of the world.

This article originally appeared in the December 2012 Issue of AUX Magazine.

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Tags: Music, AUX Magazine, Josh Hewiss

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