To be blunt, its beauty is gone

The Boston Globe
June 20, 2006

THEY have sworn off playing it in Britain and Australian radio listeners are learning to loathe it. James Blunt himself has called You're Beautiful "the most overplayed record of the year".

But the song has shown no signs of slowing its tender rampage. Now, with a selection of parodies circulating on the internet, You're Beautiful has concluded the five stages of pop hitdom: "Hey, what's that new song?"; "I love that new song!"; "Oh, you just discovered that song? I heard that song months ago!"; "Why won't they stop playing that song!"; and finally, "Wow, have you heard the hilarious spoof of that song?"

Here's a sampling:

”Beautiful”: A Parody by Kevin Sage


Do you want this video for your MySpace, blog, or website? CLICK HERE!
Visit The Official Kevin Sage MySpace Page
Visit www.kevinsage.com

Actor-writer-director Kevin Sage gets Kinks-y with his video spoof She Was Beautiful … I Swear! (www.kevinsage.com). In his version, Sage meets what he thinks is a beautiful woman until he gets, um, him home. As he sheds his clothes (a la Blunt in the original video), Sage gets increasingly desperate, trying to convince the viewer that "she was beautiful, I swear" - Adam's apple notwithstanding.

In You're Pitiful, stalwart parodist "Weird Al" Yankovic mocks a sci-fi geek with lines like "you've never had a date, that you couldn't inflate". Like most of the Beautiful spoofs, he makes fun of Blunt's seemingly mistimed early entry into the song. If nothing else, it proves Yankovic (www.weirdal.com) still has pretty good pipes.

The website Stereogum (www.stereogum.com/archives/ 002721.html) is one place to hear My Cubicle, a depressing workplace take in which a vocalist laments "my job is stupid/ my day's a bore/ inside this office/ from 8-4". With a killjoy boss lurking as he empties his in-tray, surfs the net and, presumably, dreamed up this ditty, the singer vents his despair at "my cubicle, it's one of 62".