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Stupid Statement Dance Mix

"It's too late! They already have it on YouTube! And someone even made it into a music video!"
— Ugly Betty

More proof that people on the Internet have too much free time.

So, you just heard the latest stupid thing some celebrity said. It's astonishingly and hilariously stupid; in fact, every time you hear it, it gets funnier and funnier. Actually, after a while, it seems to have its own peculiar rhythm. All you need to do is loop it a few times, set it to a drumbeat, and add a couple of instruments, possibly Auto-Tune it... tada! It's a new song! Make a simple video for it, slap it on YouTube, and you're good to go!

Note that the statement does not have to be stupid. It could have odd diction, or idiosyncratic pronunciation, or something else that made it the grist in the mill of Memetic Mutation. Whatever it was, it's got a nice techno beat now. Recent Real Life examples may be Auto-Tuned to make it even more danceable. To make things even easier, there are now apps for Android and iOS that would automatically do that for you!

Compare Ear Worm, Voice Clip Song and Speedy Techno Remake. See Caramelldansen Vid and Red Zone Remix Vid for specific examples of this trope that have gotten out of hand.

Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Advertising 

    Anime 

    Comedy 
  • Among the new songs written for Monty Python's farewell performance was the "Nudge Rap/Theme From Blackmail", which doubled as a SSDM of their "Nudge Nudge" skit and a segue into their "Blackmail" skit.

    Comic Books 

    Fan Works 

    Films — Animation 
  • This Alice in Wonderland remix is surprisingly catchy... if not creepy.
    • ...Pretty much everything else Pogo has done, too. The reason the Alice mix is no longer on his own channel? He's been hired by Disney because his mixes are so awesome.
    • Much more quality on his youtube kinda "channel" with this one. Say What Again.
  • In-Universe version in Turbo, where a kid's comment when seeing that titular turbo-propelled Snail ("That snail is fast!") became first a YouTube hit and then a blockbuster reaggetonesque song.

    Films — Live-Action 

    Live-Action TV 

    Music 
  • The Ur-Example is the composition "It's Gonna Rain" by Steve Reich, where he took part of a speech from an over-the-top street preacher and looped it...in 1965. Many of the early pioneers in the techno/trance/house genre cite Steve Reich and specifically this piece as an inspiration.
  • Another early example was Scott Johnson's "John Somebody" which came out in the late 70s. It sampled random bits of phone conversations with friends and recordings of laughter and played guitar riffs to accompany them. Though his work wasn't necessarily to mock them, but to bring attention to the musical quality of the human voice.
  • The band Talking Heads seem to have been instrumental in the development of this trope, oddly enough:
  • Also in 1984, Time Zone (Johnny Rotten and Afrika Bambaataa) first recorded their classic rap World Destruction, then made it into a dance mix version featuring, among other things, a sample of then-Presidential candidate Walter Mondale saying "Mr. Reagan has a thing about arms control."
  • Also running for President in 1984 was Rev. Jesse Jackson, whose iconic address to the Democratic Convention and one of his "Free South Africa" speeches were sampled by Stetsasonic for 1987's A.F.R.I.C.A.
  • Arguable proto-example: Ice Cube wrote a song called "The Predator" in 1992, whose refrain looped Arnold Schwarzenegger's catchphrase "I'll be back," from The Terminator.
  • Prince had a #1 hit single in 1989 with "Batdance". The song is literally two Stupid Statement Dance Mixes mashed together: a maniacal dance beat for Batman and the Joker, with a slinky funk number for Vicki Vale. Each section also got their own 12" remix.
    • Here's a transcript of the early part of the song, just to give you a taste of how schizoid it really is: "[guitar riff] 'Oh, I got a live one here! Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!' [marimba] [guitar riff] 'GET THE FUNK UP!' 'BATMAN!' 'GET THE FUNK UP!' 'BATMAN!' 'GET THE FUNK UP!' 'Go-Go-Go with a smile! [percussive beat] 'BAT-DANCE!' 'Do it!' [saxophone riff]..."
  • Similarly, Madonna's "Now I'm Following You" remix on I'm Breathless, based on a cover of a 1930s tune heard in Dick Tracy. Madonna even "interacts" with the movie's characters, causing an overlap with another trope.
    • This one nearly rivals "Batdance" for sheer outrageousness: "[comically slowed-down voice] My feet...My feet...might be falling out of - [comically sped-up, "chipmunked" tape-player voice]..."
    • There's a weird one on the B side of the original "Like a Prayer". Madonna recites the Act of Contrition, a prayer for forgiveness — and immediately loses her temper.
  • One of the earliest clear examples (predating YouTube by a good ten years) has to be It's a Skull (AKA Valhalla, in the style of... a crap dance mix), which featured vocals made entirely from voice samples taken from Valhalla and the Lord of Infinity, an adventure game for the Amiga, created as an entry to Amiga Power's regular "In the style of..." competition, and later published on the coverdisk a few issues later.
  • Pre-Internet proto-example: At a 1986 Venom concert in New Jersey, the late Joe Cole, roadie for opening act Black Flag, recorded the drunken onstage banter of Cronos, singer for headlining act Venom ("It's called Newcastle Brown Ale! IT KNOCKS YOU ON YOUR FUCKIN' BACK, LET ME TELL YOU!!"), with the songs edited out. Sonic Youth leader Thurston Moore released the recorded ranting as an unofficial 7'' single on his record label Ecstatic Peace, and the Beastie Boys sampled it.
  • There's an entire subgenre of using Stupid Statement Dance Mixes as a Take That, Critics!: wrapping their words up in the very music they're rallying against:
  • In a very different example we have Tim Lambesis of As I Lay Dying's side project Austrian Death Machine. The concept is to make brutal, hardcore, thrash/metalcore songs out of Arnie quotes. It even has Chad Ackerman of Destroy the Runner performing Arnie impressions.
  • 80s mutant disco group Was (Not Was) released a dance mix of the first George Bush's "read my lips" speech under the name A Thousand Points of Night.
  • Bass Guitar giant Victor Wooten of all people has one.
  • British art-pop group The Chap, with Never a frown with Gordon Brown.
  • Some of multimedia performance group Emergency Broadcast Network's work in this vein was used as an opening act for U2 in the 90s.
  • TAS-1000's only album, A Message For Marta was all songs based around loops of answering machine messages (taken from a tape that was in a used answering machine a member purchased).
  • Negativland's U2 single set some bootlegged outtakes of a foul-mouthed Casey Kasem to a cheesy instrumental version of U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." Naturally the official release got sued out of existence.
    • Negativland has done a number of these over the years. The best known and most controversial is probably "Christianity Is Stupid" in which a recording of Rev. Estus Pirkle, speaking in a self-produced 1971 film about what life under Godless communism would be like, is taken out of context and re-edited.
  • Imma let you finish... but I have the best stupid statement mixes of all time, yo!
  • FRONTIER PSYCHIATRIST! Made by The Avalanches from various clips from non-musical records (as well as movies).
  • Marcus Kinchin's "Dub of Doom" remix of The Nightcrawlers' "Push The Feeling On" was far more popular than the original song, to the extent that all subsequent remixes were based on his.
  • "Call My Name", an early self-released song by The Spinto Band, did this with The Childlike Empress from the film version of The NeverEnding Story ("Why don't you do what you dream, Bastian? Call my name! Call my name!").
  • When Paris Hilton's pop album came out, Danger Mouse and Banksy made 500 CDs with a SSDM of all the stupid things Paris has ever said and distributed them randomly in record shops in the UK amongst the real albums.
  • They Might Be Giants' "P.S.O.K." - though there is a brief chorus of sorts sung by John Flansburgh, most of the vocals are sampled stage banter from Kiss's Paul Stanley, sourced from a bootleg collection of banter entitled People, Let Me Get This Off My Chest. It mainly demonstrates how Stanley keeps using variations on the same lines show after show:
    We haven't played this one but once all this whole tour
    We haven't played this one in a long time
    I don't think we've played this one in a long time
    We haven't played this one in a long time
  • Roughly 80% of Fatboy Slim's music is this, such as:
  • German techno band Scooter delighted us with hits like "Hyper, hyper" and "How much is the fish?".
  • "Director's Cut" by '89 Skratch Gangstaz mixes various Arnold Schwarzenegger lines into the track.
  • German DJ group Noisy Stylus remixes the Powerpuff Girls episode "Beat Your Greens" into the track "Broccoli Wars".
  • Handsome Boy Modeling School's So...How's Your Girl? includes two short SSDMs of an episode of the sitcom Get A Life, which the group got their name from: "Look At This Face (Oh My God, They're Gorgeous!)" and "Modeling Sucks".
  • Covenant's "Painamplifier"("Put your life in a pain-a pain-a pain-a pain amplifier") and "Shelter"("The atom bomb explodes again!"... :BAAAOOOM: :BAAAOOOM: :BAAAOOOM: for the rest of the song)
  • Paul Hardcastle's lone 1985 hit "19" sampled a documentary about The Vietnam War, the song's name coming from one sample which stated that the average Vietnam soldier was 19 years old at the timenote . Unlike most examples of this trope, it's quite horrifying.
    Saigon, Saigon, S-S-S-S-S-S-Saigon. N-N-N-N-Nine-Nine, N-N-N-N-Nineteen.
  • Look at this photograph. Every time I do it makes me laugh. Every time I do it makes me laugh. Every time I do it makes me laugh. When I laugh it makes me laugh. Every time I laugh it makes me laugh...
  • Well, the years start coming, and they don't stop coming, and they don't stop coming, and they don't stop coming...
  • Garbage released as a B-side a techno remix of a woman saying "I'm Really Into Techno, and that's about it."
  • Sunshine by UK house group Umboza: "Bambo Bambo Bambo Bambo Bambole Bamboleo! Bambole Bamboleo!", sampled from The Gipsy Kings' 1987 hit.
  • "Ricky" by Remarc and Lewi Cifer, a Jungle track sampling Ricky's death scene from Boyz n the Hood.

    News and Current Affairs 

    Professional Wrestling 
  • When Candice Michelle Took a Level in Badass in 2007, challenging Melina for the Women's Championship, WWE composer Jim Johnston took her previous entrance theme "What Love Is" (a fairly straightforward R&B number with a rap breakdown toward the end) and remixed it into a new version that started out like the old one and sounded like it for about four seconds, but then veered off into wacko repetition mode and stayed like that for the rest of the song; with its mind-numbing techno beat and ad nauseam repetitions of "Move your body", "Raise your hands up", and "All eyes on muh-muh-muh-muh-muh-me!", it's easy to interpret this as a parody of Stupid Statement Dance Mixes...but no, it's dead serious. (You can hear the "What Love Is" remix on the 2008 album WWE The Music Volume 8.)

    Traditional Games 

    Radio 
  • Sandi Toksvig pronouncing "Eyjafjallajökull" on The News Quiz, with additional material by Andy Hamilton. This was played on the show itself the following week.
  • The immortal and legendary Karl Pilkington gave us "I Could Eat a Knob at Night" from the first series of The Ricky Gervais Show podcast. Example.
  • Back in 2000, The Jim Rome Show received a tape of a remix of frequent caller John in C-Town set to music, prominently featuring the phrase "Lunch with the monkey". note 
  • The end of Big Finish Doctor Who's "The Holy Terror" contains a crowd chant from the story ("ALL HAIL FROBISHER, ALL HAIL THE BIG TALKING BIRD') set to a driving Eurotechno beat as an Easter Egg.
  • An artist called DruBoogie has been featured on Opie And Anthony, remixing both clips from the show and from popular internet videos.
    • Another remix played on the show was a remix of Bob Kelly breaking his knee ("I broke my knee, man!")
  • The final episode of the 2015 Vote Now Show ended with a Stupid Statement Dance Mix of all the "best" quotes from the election campaign.

    Video Games 

    Web Comics 

    Web Series/Original 

    Western Animation 

    Unsorted 

"HOW MANY REMIXES ARE THERE, FERCHRISTSAKE??"

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