Over the years, lots of interesting and bizarre things have been done with “Over The Rainbow,” a song of yearning originally written for 1939’s The Wizard Of Oz by Harold Arlen and E.Y. “Yip” Harburg. Jerry Lee Lewis turned it into a country-tinged barroom lament. Me First And The Gimme Gimmes did the requisite ironic punk cover. And Tiny Tim, God bless him, turned it into a Tiny Tim song. Canadian musician Steve Onotera, whose screen name is samuraiguitarist, has chosen to do his own arrangement of the song using only Google Doodles. In honoring the birthdays of musicians and inventors, the popular search engine has contorted its own logo into the form of playable musical instruments, including a Moog synthesizer, a theremin, and a Les Paul guitar, so many times that a small virtual orchestra could be composed entirely of Google Doodles. So that’s what Onotera did, and the results are surprisingly lovely. In concert, these Doodles make a credible ensemble.
“Rainbow” is hardly the first of Onotera’s gimmicky pop-culture covers. He has previously favored YouTube with a blues rendition of the theme from The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air and an Afrobeat cover of the Archer theme, among others. Those inordinately pleased by samuraiguitarist’s take on “Over The Rainbow” should know that the musician has recently launched a Patreon page where fans can support his work financially.
[via Laughing Squid]