The Ballad Of Davy Crockett (In Outer Space)

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YouTube
Music video for "The Ballad Of Davy Crockett (In Outer Space)"
YouTube
Music video animatic

song name The Ballad of Davy Crockett (In Outer Space)
artist They Might Be Giants
releases Disney Music Block Party, Here Comes Science, Podcast 56
year 2008
run time 2:13
sung by John Flansburgh and John Linnell


Trivia/Info

  • A parody of the 1954 folk song, "The Ballad of Davy Crockett" (once used by Disney to promote the 1954 film, Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier). TMBG's version stays mainly faithful to the original's arrangement, with the exception of the addition of some futuristic spacey effects and synths.
  • Regarding the band's decision to do a new version of this song, Flansburgh stated, "The folks at Disney are always very eager to keep their catalog of songs alive, and long lists were shuffled our way for compilation projects and possible placements. We grew up with the song, and it sounded like a fun thing to update."[1]
  • A video for the song was released on the They Might Be Giants Friday Night Family Podcast feed on Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008. The video was directed by David Cowles, Max Porter, and Ru Kuwahata (of Tiny Inventions). Tiny Inventions posted a blog entry about the creation of the video, including storyboards and rough animation. It can be viewed here. The video also won first place in the "Commissioned Music Video" category as the 2009 Kalamazoo Film Festival.
  • According to Cowles, the video was originally going to be entirely animated on a chalkboard. However, when a Disney executive expressed hesitancy about this decision, Tiny Inventions decided to take a more varied approach with the video, centering it around a classroom.
  • The animatic for the video has a few differences; the intro scene is slightly different, having someone glue the letters from the song title onto a wall rather than focusing on a paper art piece of Davy Crockett. In addition, the ending featured more of Copernicus, having him break up the fight between Davy and the bear, and then sleeping underneath the table that Davy and the bear are drinking at.
  • According to the October 27, 2021 episode of This Might Be a Podcast, which featured Cowles, this song's video was technically the first that he completed for Here Comes Science, as it was not intended for the album at first and was meant to be standalone.

Song Themes

Criminal Activities, People (Real), Robots, Space, Swing Feel, Time, Title Not In Lyrics, TMBG Remakes, Transportation

Videos

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Current Rating

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The Ballad Of Davy Crockett (In Outer Space) is currently ranked #610 out of 1005. (35 wikians have given it an average rating of 7.97)