Wednesday Video Spotlight: Toby Keith’s “Red Solo Cup” passes 1 million views
Raise your iconic plastic partyware in tribute: Oklahoma country music star Toby Keith’s uproarious music video for “Red Solo Cup” passed 1 million views Monday evening, just two weeks after debuting online.
The raucous anthem is included on Keith’s new album, “Clancy’s Tavern,” which was released Monday.
Though still not officially a single at radio, the song and its party-themed video have created a viral tidal wave. Beyond the online views, “Red Solo Cup” is the No. 1 video at CMT, giving Keith two videos in the top five. The clip for his recent No. 1 single “Made in America” is the other.
In a recent phone interview, Keith told me that during the standing-room-only dates on his “Locked & Loaded Tour,” the crew has started dressing up in giant red Solo cup costumes and doling out the mini versions of the cups to the frenzied crowd.
During our chat, the Norman resident jokingly called “Red Solo Cup” “the most profound, intelligent thing I’ve ever done.”
The catchy ditty was written by Brett and Brad Warren and Brett and Jim Beavers, and Keith said it wasn’t pitched to him to record but just sent to him as an MP3.
“It was ‘listen to what I heard last night,’ one of them deals. I played it, I laughed out loud, and my first comment was, ‘That is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. That is stupid; somebody wrote a song about red plastic cups,’” Keith said.
“And next morning, I wake up from just hearing it and I’m going, ‘Holy cow, I know that song inside and out. I cannot get it out of my head,’” he added. “It just gets stuck in your head like an infection.”
After the unedited version of the video, featuring cameos from late-night TV host Craig Ferguson, comics Carrot Top and Jeff Dunham, rockers Sammy Hagar and Ted Nugent, fellow country singers Joe Nichols and Eric Church, basketball legend Larry Bird and more, Keith said some radio stations started playing a mono – not stereo – version of the song after ripping the audio from the online video.
“We’re kind of sitting here in a holding pattern going, ‘I don’t want to release another single and have this thing stomp on it.’ So I’m just sitting here letting it fly and going, ‘Do your thing,’” he said with a chuckle. “There’s nothing else out there like it, and it’s just one of those crazy things that happens sometimes in music. … It’s just one of the craziest things we’ve ever done. And I’m having so much fun with. And if takes over, godspeed, and if doesn’t, I’ll come out with the real single.”
To read my new interview with Keith about his new album, click here; to read my review of “Clancy’s Tavern,” click here.
-BAM
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Reminds me of college days any my four years in the military. Parties were the most memorable part.