Posted on 07/20/2010 9:56:36 PM PDT by iowamark
What started as a one-shot song parody has spun into a viral video garnering 79,000 hits in its first week for Z102.9’s “Iowa Gurls.”
The creative forces at Cedar Rapids rock radio station KZIA gave pop siren Katy Perry’s candylicious “California Gurls” a cornfield spin earlier this month — and have watched it all explode.
“We thought we’d do an ‘Iowa Gurls’ song and play it once on the radio,” says Chris Jackson, 27, of Cedar Rapids, KZIA’s evening on-air personality. “Everyone loved it so much, they started requesting it and we started playing it (in rotation) like a real song. Then listeners said we should make a music video.”
So they did.
Perry’s version extols the beauty and heat radiating from the Golden State, where girls traipse around a Candyland paradise, sporting “sun-kissed skin so hot it will melt your popsicle.” KZIA’s version sings the praises of “Iowa, the land of farmers’ daughters” with “farmer tans so hot they’ll pop your popcorn.”
“After Katy Perry’s ‘California Gurls’ came out, it became a huge sensation,” Jackson says. “Other states, like Minnesota and North Dakota, started making their own parodies. This was the perfect opportunity to do ours on Iowa girls and Iowa stereotypes.”
Never meant to be a serious discourse on the Hawkeye State, he says the project grew “all out of good fun.”
“We got together a few ideas and stereotypes. Everybody thinks we live on farms,” says Jackson, who served as editor and director for the music video, and takes his star turn as the Snoop Dogg-style rapper near the end.
“We shot it over a three-day period and it became a huge hit,” Jackson says. “It was nothing we really expected to be so popular.”
The cast and crew traveled to various locations the second week of July for the short shoot, including Cedar Rapids, Solon and Iowa City.
“It really was such a quick process for something we put together just spur-of-the-moment,” Jackson says.
Best of all, he says the project “cost absolutely nothing.”
“We did it all on our own,” Jackson says. “I happen to be a music producer and video editor on my own time, so I used my own tools. It was really easy to put together.”
KZIA Morning Show producer Clare Duffy sings the lead vocals and the Cedar Rapids Rollergirls make special appearances.
“They were really great to work with,” Jackson says of the local roller derby athletes.
The video debuted on the station’s website July 14, 2010, and from there, it snowballed.
“We’ve had lots of good feedback,” Jackson says. “A couple people aren’t taking it as a joke. We know girls in Iowa aren’t dancing around in cornfields. Everybody loves the Katy Perry song, and this way, they get to relate to it. Girls in Iowa don’t live the fancy beach life.
“We’ve had good feedback for something that was just a joke.”
mark
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