Y.M.C.A. (song) - Covers and Parodies

Covers and Parodies

• In 1979 a Finnish version "NMKY" was performed on television.
• Cover version sung in Japanese titled "Young Man", was recorded by a Japanese singer Hideki Saijo and released in spring 1979. It marked the #1 on the Japanese official singles chart Oricon for 5 weeks, and finally sold more than 800,000 copies and became the most commercially successful cover version of the song. "Young Man" won the 1979 Japan Music Awards for Grand Prix.
• Adam and the Ants performed a live cover version of YMCA in the late 70s and early 80s, renaming it "A.N.T.S.", and heavily altering the lyrics - for example, "young man" became "Ant fan". The track was recorded in 1981 to give away free on a Flexidisc with Flexipop Magazine in the UK. The lyrics were altered slightly from the live version, as the refrain of "Go then, to Adam & the Ants, they will make you cum in your pants" before the chorus was deemed too offensive for the largely young readers of Flexipop. Adam Ant reinstated A.N.T.S. in his live repertoire in 2011, having not performed the song live since 1980.
• In the late-80's to early 90's, comedian Bobcat Goldthwaite did an imitation of Bono singing the song to the tune of With Or Without You in his stand-up routine.
• A famous YouTube video - Evolution of Dance - features the chorus of this single.
• KFUM is the Danish equivalent of YMCA. It was a big hit in Denmark in 1980 by the show-group Østjysk Musikforsyning with Danish lyrics by Karlo Staunskjær.
• In 1997, Pepsi launched a Super Bowl ad where five bears danced an alternate version with "P-E-P-S-I" instead of the usual "Y-M-C-A".
• The webcomic User Friendly spoofed the song when Dust Puppy and Erwin sang an altered version which included the lyrics "It's fun to violate the DMCA."
• On July 2, 2004, Colin Powell, then the U.S. Secretary of State, performed a modified version of "YMCA" for his fellow foreign government officials at the ASEAN security meeting in Jakarta. His lyrics includes the lines:

  President Bush, he said to me: 'Colin, I know you will agree. I need you to run the Department of State. We are between a rock and a hard place.'

• George Lam recorded a Cantonese remix, still titled "YMCA". This cover version was first released in 1979 as part of album "Choice" (抉擇). It was also featured on 2001 Music is Live - George Lam & Eason Chan Karaoke
• In 2011: The Sportsgasms, a sports song parody group out of San Francisco, release Sports Nut (Y.M.C.A. Song Parody) which uses double entendres to challenge the stereotype of the typical sports fan.
• In 2008 Super Junior a Korean pop group released a version of the song on the DVD of their Super Show Asia Tour. During the performance the singers wore costumes including Peter Pan, Jack Sparrow, Harry Potter, a clown, Bruce Lee and others. As part of the tour the song was performed in South Korea, China and Thailand. The tour was also expected to travel to Tokyo, Taipei and Hong Kong, but those shows never happened.
• A cover by TC Moses appears in the Nintendo DS game Elite Beat Agents.
• A parody, with the Village People, appears in a 2012 in television TV commercial for Wonderful Pistachios. They sing "C-R-A-C-K" instead of "Y-M-C-A".
• In September 2012 a Slovenian musical group and stand-up comedians Slon in Sadež released a slovene parody of the YMCA-song with the title "NNLB". It is making fun out of irresponsible financial management of the largest bank in Slovenia Nova Ljubljanska banka (NLB), causing a severe long lasting financial and economic crisis of Slovenia.