Help out some less than hip teachers pick a song for a high school lipdub.
May 5, 2011 10:32 AM   Subscribe

Lipdub filter: Can you suggest a song?

I work at a high school and we are going to put together a lipdub with the students. We need suggestions for songs! We want something upbeat and positive that reflects how awesome our school is. School rules are involved, so swearing, drugs, sex, illegal activities etc can not be in the song. It should also be a top 40 song so that the majority of the student body knows the words. One suggestion has been Born This Way by Lady Gaga. Bonus points for Canadian musicians.
posted by sadtomato to Grab Bag (9 answers total)
 
"Wake Up" by Arcade Fire!
This song is almost a cliche by now but who cares, it's magnificent.
posted by PercussivePaul at 10:50 AM on May 5, 2011


I was going to mention Arcade Fire, too.
posted by KokuRyu at 11:51 AM on May 5, 2011


I'll admit some of the students may think it's a bit cheese-tastic, but how about "Bang The Drum," the song that Bryan Adams and Nelly Furtado did for the Vancouver Olympics?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:57 AM on May 5, 2011


"Firework" by Katy Perry (whom I would have sworn was Canadian for some reason, but apparently isn't).
"Baby" by very Canadian Justin Bieber. Is Bieber uncool enough that doing a Bieber song would be ironically cool? I'm not cool enough to know.
posted by Rock Steady at 12:29 PM on May 5, 2011


I think OK Go would be great for lipdubbing; my top choice would be Here it Goes Again, but it's obliquely about sex. But This Too Shall Pass is pretty harmless. It's not really Top 40, but their music videos are very popular, so I'd bet that most of your kids have at least heard the song before. (And there aren't that many words to learn in the first place.)
posted by enlarged to show texture at 1:19 PM on May 5, 2011


Oh my gosh, this is really hard.

I listen to C89.5 via online streaming. It's a radio station operating under the official auspices of a high school in Seattle. I would have thought that any of the hits there would be both familiar to your fellow students and meet your content guidelines. But... not so much, if you listen closely.

I ruled out "Like a G6," "Animal" by the Neon Trees, "Indestructible" by Robyn, and "Keep Up" by Hypercrush based on borderline content violations.

Pink's "Raise Your Glass" comes closest to meeting your criteria. Although the explicit version contains "the f-word," there is a clean-for-radio version available. Would that work?

The hard thing, too, is finding songs that haven't been Glee'd to death. For that reason I would suggest looking back to really old stuff, like Tom Jones, the Bee Gees, Neil Diamond - songs that everyone knows the lyrics to, but which are off the beaten path.

(Or you could just do Rick Astley. Ha!!!)
posted by ErikaB at 4:46 PM on May 5, 2011


Response by poster: Yes, this is really hard. We have started looking at older songs and have had some good suggestions but nothing that really grabs the positive vibe we are looking for. We are an inner city school and tend to have an unfair reputation of being bad school. So we really want every one to know that our school is in fact filled with amazing kids and teachers.
posted by sadtomato at 5:54 PM on May 5, 2011


Pink's Raise Your Glass makes a great lib dub, as my school recently demonstrated.
posted by PercussivePaul at 7:35 PM on May 5, 2011


Jay Sean's Down (peppy, danceable!)

Taio Cruz's Dynamite (gets stuck in your head even if you hate it!)

K'naan's Waving Flag (always makes me kinda teary) might be too political though but bonus points for Canadian content!
posted by vespabelle at 10:01 AM on May 6, 2011


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