I went on YouTube a couple of evenings ago to watch a video I hadn’t seen in a while.
It was Jimmy Fallon and Miley Cyrus doing “Islands in The Stream” with each of them dressed as one of the original singers, Jimmy as Kenny Rogers and Miley as Dolly Parton. It was the sort of thing that could have become a parody fairly easily, but it didn’t.
The two of them played it straight, and I quickly realized two things: Jimmy Kimmel is a better singer than most people think he is, and Miley Cyrus can flat-out sing.
After watching that one, I took a look at the list of videos on the right-hand side of the screen. As far as I can figure, some of these are suggestions based on the video you just watched and others are videos you have watched fairly often. In this case, the one at the top of the list was “Old Alabama” by Brad Paisley from the 2011 Academy of Country Music Awards show.
He and his band came out and were working their way through the song, which references a lot of ‘old’ Alabama tunes, and then Brad finished one chorus and said, “Here they come”.
The screen at the back of the stage parted, three members of Alabama came out with their guitars – and the place went crazy.
They joined Brad for the rest of the song, but it was just the perfect union of old country (Alabama) and so-called new country (Brad Paisley), playing and having fun together.
With that in mind, I knew what my next video was. I have very few details about what awards show or special this was, but it was a group of dancing chimney sweeps, led by Derek Hough, singing and dancing to “Step in Time” from “Mary Poppins”.
They got through most of the song and then Hough and one of the other sweeps went to a pair of doors and threw them open to reveal – Dick Van Dyke.
In less than a second, the audience was on its feet for the legend that is Dick Van Dyke. The next line of the song was, “Link your elbows, Step in time”, and Dick linked arms with Derek and the other fellow and they started to walk forward.
Then they came to the next chorus, and Dick joined right in with some quick dance steps, mocking the idea he was over 90 years old.
I spent probably another half hour that evening, just moving from one video to another. Some were old, some were new.
All were enjoyable.