This Hanukkah, the Maccabeats may have released their most epic parody of all time. It’s based on Netflix’s most iconic kids’ movie of all time, “KPop Demon Hunters,” and it is very good.
It’s true, I expected a lot of parodies of the history-making Netflix film (we already got a KPop Adon Olam, after all,) but the Maccabeats beat my expectations by covering not one, not two, but five (!) songs from the uber-catchy movie soundtrack. And just like a good Kpop song mixes Korean phrases with English lyrics, this parody is bilingual, featuring Hebrew lines amongst the puns.
“We ended up taking things in a slightly different direction this time,” the group’s music director Julian Horowitz told Kveller over e-mail. “I think in the past we’ve spoken about ‘changing up the formula,’ and while I doubt this is what we had in mind, we’re very proud of what we were able to put together.”
The video is made up of animated avatars of the band singing, dancing, frying latkes (duh), spinning dreidels and wearing colorful fashions and Rumi wigs. There’s a 3D battle between apple sauce and sour cream, and the video ends with a little shot of demon cat Derpy napping by a lit menorah.
But the music is the best part, of course. In their parody of HUNTR/X’s “Takedown,” the group shows off their rapping skills and sings: “I don’t think you’re ready for my latkes.” When covering “My Idol,” they talk about the desecration of the Temple where a statue of a Hellenistic idol was erected. The Saja Boys’ “Soda Pop” becomes “my little spinning top,” an ode to the Hanukkah dreidel.
“Golden” becomes “Still Golden,” a moving anthem about our people’s survival, in which the group sings in Hebrew — “ner tamid lo kava” (“an eternal light didn’t go out”) — speaking of the perpetual feature in our synagogues and Jewish prayer spaces. “Od lo avda tikvat alfei shanin” (“the hope of thousands of years hasn’t been lost”), paraphrases the lyrics from “HaTikvah,” about not losing the hope of 2000 years to be a free nation.
The song ends with, arguably, the best part of this parody. The Maccabeats take on the epic “This Is What It Sounds Like,” which becomes a true anthem for Jewish resilience: “Cuz we’re still builders, cuz we we’re still strivers, cuz we have heroes, we have survivors/The dreamers, the fighters, we’re broken, we’re tired/But we’ll keep the fire, and/I’ll be right here by your side,” they sing.
Honestly, you might feel like you’ve been chopping onions (for latkes) after watching this video.
One thing is for sure: The Maccabeats pulled out all the stops for this one. We’re impressed.
