Walk Off the Earth

We’ve all heard Walk Off the Earth’s cover of ‘Somebody That I Used to Know’ by Gotye, and if you haven’t then you should get on it, because these guys are actually good. Actually, they’re better than good. They’re talented. And they use their talent creatively.

A lot of stuff goes on YouTube that really does suck (search for any two random words, and you will find a home video that was not worth the effort of uploading to the web), but that’s great, because after a long day in uni, toilet television might just be what we need to totally numb our brain. But these guys really were worth going viral and I’m happy for them. I mean, come on, they’re catchy, and not just the Gotye cover, but all of their covers. (and when I say catchy, I’m not talking about that frustrating catchy where you end up with Nicole Scherzinger singing in your head... “Why? WHY?!”)

They put a creative twist on what they cover, from Rihanna to Adele, and have really done what a lot of artists try to do but don’t quite pull off. The thing that they get right is that they don’t try and copy the song, they add their own innovative flavour to it, and I don’t mean that they just play it acoustically either. They change it. They take what people know and love, and they reform it, and that’s what makes their music so good.

But let's take a look at where these guys were before they hit 23,000,000+ (as seen on 16th January). So according to Wikipedia, which I’ll use as a reference for an article that you’ll probably read on the tube, the toilet, or not at all; their first success was when they covered ‘Backin’ Up’ by the Gregory Brothers, uploaded on the 13th Dec 2010, which I’m not going to lie, I didn’t know before these guys covered them (Does that make me uncool? Should I have? I don’t know). That didn’t hit far higher than 1mil, which I’m assuming about half came after their current hit anyway, but even so they did well. But, these guys started out in 2006! Where were they for like 5 years? Did Sarah “Sin” Blackwood (I don’t care how well she sings, that’s kind of lame you have to admit) have to come into the picture for these guys to make it as big as they are today? Did five people have to play the guitar simultaneously for their talent to shine out? I don’t know, but I’m excited to see what their coming album will be like, and whether it will live up to the high expectations that these guys have created for themselves.