This 2014 Webby Awards winner takes Miley Cyrus’ controversial music video and gives it my musicless treatment. In my fifth Music Video Without Music and second collab with CollegeHumor I present the silent, alternate reality where nothing stands between the viewer and the acoustic world of binge twerking.

Origin

It was the time when Miley Cyrus was making a stir with her new image. A couple of months have passed since my last Music Video Without Music – a music video in which I rebuild the audio tracks to make it seem like there was never any music there to begin with. And in case of this video, I believe this is the first time I got a genuinely scary result.

Much more went into this acoustic remake. Again, the acapella (vocal track) of Miley Cyrus was not available. Contacting a freelance singer paid off and thanks to the professional recording of Brooke Penning by the CollegeHumor team, we had a personalised Miley soundalike track. Afterwards my job consisted of mixing in more than a hundred audio recordings to create a soundscape to match the entire video.

Impact

The reactions were confused, but positive. Many saw the critique of the current state of music videos.

Before it was uplaoded on YouTube, it was already mentioned on over 40 sites, including: Entertainment Weekly, Perez Hilton, E! Online, Gawker, Huffington Post, Hit Fix, NYC Prowler, Dooby Brain, Jaded Punk, Zumic, Elite Daily, Wild 94.9, Zap 2 It, Cool News Zone, Right This Minute, The Strut, Aux, The Daily Swarm, The Nosebleeds, Zach Sang and the Gang, Bandmine, The Interrobang, Ohh Word, Much Music, Xfinity, Soundisstyle, 106.1 Kiss FM, Kiss FM 96.7, Hot 99.5, Y98 CBS Local, Hot 107.9, iVillage, G105, MStarz, Cambio, Design & Trend, Now 105, Superbangers and more.

As of April 2014, the video has over 1.5 million views on YouTube.

Webby Award

The video has won a Webby Award in the Online Video Remix/Mashup category in May 2014.

Credits

While all the credits are included in the video/page, I would like to dedicate this space to the people at FreeSound.org who have provided me with sound recordings on a Creative Commons Attribution license. Here are their usernames:

freqman, corsica s, dr-fab, lg, volivieri, swuing, sumanguru gyra jones, decembered, ifartinurgeneraldirection, dobroide, hy96, rewired, stephsinger22, sergenious, rock savage, gelo papas, noisecollector, kaiodeleis, mad monkey, jrssandoval, mkoenig, benboncan, djahren, schatzl03, jobro, cgeffex, tasmanianpower, herbertboland, bmcken, thanvannispen, dariachic, bulbastre, joelaudio, unchaz, rap2h, slave2thelight, hbsa, qubodup, dream4dreamtheater, adamweeden, erdie, forrisday, lauriesafari, goup 1, avakas, klankbeeld, jorickhoofd, unfa, koroshiya1, yuval

Thank you all very much for making this possible.