It’s an impossible task at best: come up with an inescapably catchy children’s song that will unseat the most-watched music video of all time, “Baby Shark.” Despite the very long odds, Jimmy Kimmel gave it a shot on Monday night (April 12) when he invited Katy Perry to join him in their quest to “doot doot” do away with the Pinkfong parent’s nightmare, which has put up more than 10 billion YouTube views to date.
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In the intro, Kimmel explained that because parents like himself and Perry have been driven to tears by the Shark gang, the pair decided to put their heads together to create the next viral kid-centric sensation, apologizing in advance to parents who will now have to endure their stinky new classic. Brainstorming in the studio, the pair decided on some simple criteria to appeal to 2-year-olds: it has to be repetitive and talk about all the subjects kids love, like dinosaurs, puppies, low-interest mortgages, planes, garbage trucks and food, which led them to their first songwriting breakthrough.
“Yum yum is a good one, right?” Kimmel said. “It causes all the hair on my body to stand up when I say the word ‘Yum Yum,’ but I think that’s good because the parents have to hate the song,” he added, suggesting they add of “nom nom” as Perry made fart sounds with her mouth and said the beat should definitely be flatulent.
Things progressed pretty quickly from there, moving through the digestive system as the non-musical pair bellied up to a piano Perry couldn’t play and found the perfect “poop” key. The results were, as promised, simple and plenty stupid.
“Clap your hands and stomp your feet/ Give me something good to eat,” Perry sang in the candy-colored video featuring the inescapable chorus, “Yum yum, nom nom, toot toot, poop!” Kimmel took on the second, anatomically specific verse. “First the food goes in your mouth/ Then it starts to travel south,” he sang as the pair floated down a cartoon esophagus into the stomach.
After stops at chicken fingers, cheesy fries, pumpkin pancakes and chocolate pies they were back at the chorus, which is already stuck in your head, because it goes, “Yum yum, nom nom, toot toot, poop!” They, of course, had to add a group of adorable children singing the chorus, as well as an owl, elephant, Baby Guillermo and Levar Burton all repeating the chorus you already can’t get out of your head: “Yum yum, nom nom, toot toot, poop!”
(At press time the video had just over 100,000 views.)
Check out the video below.
