Video of the Week: Memories by Maroon 5 feat. Peter Griffin

Part of a weekly series

Hello dear friends and subscribers. Stay with me — You may have seen this video already. Forgive me for a moment as I share my thoughts on it. For those of you who haven’t watched this cover of “Memories,” itself an unofficial cover of Pachelbel’s Canon in D, I recommend taking a look. Just be sure to open it in a private browser or something if you don’t want Family Guy clips recommended to you in the future.

The power of the human voice is at times astounding. We have these thoughts in our heads about what we want to say, and how best to say it. Then, air circulating through the trachea is articulated on its way up into a desired form that expresses those thoughts to people around us. In the case of such talented cartoon impersonators as shown below, the air is shaped so finely and deliberately that listeners cannot tell if one man, or ten fictional characters, are singing. The result, as you can see here, is true vocalized honesty.

Much as I like to pretend the video inspires me in this way, I’m also entertained by how it’s put together. The timers for each character on the left-hand side make it look like an interval training exercise, where you the viewer would have to follow along, straining your vocal muscles dancing between Stewie and Homer. And of course, the melancholy portraits of the characters makes the whole thing hard to take seriously. I’ve always been interested in these guys, who would often pop up on my YouTube home page or elsewhere doing these kinds of impressions. To borrow the words of a commenter on this video, they seem to be made “without a hint of irony.” With upwards of half a million views, do you think the singer is happy with what they’ve made? Let me know in the comments of this post.