Literal videos – 1980s classics with the lyrics changed to reflect the action onscreen – might be what the internet was invented for, writes DARRAGH McMANUS

RECENTLY I was looking at something online – haiku movie reviews or a Flash cartoon of monkey gladiators or some such nonsense – and the person watching with me said, “This is exactly what the internet was invented for.” And they were right.

There’s been endless optimistic, aspirational talk about how the web has revolutionised communications, liberated societies, transformed culture and – to use an appropriately modish term – subverted the dominant paradigm. Much of this is right and true.

But for many of us, the net is less the cutting-edge of modernity than the junk-bucket of pop-culture flotsam and jetsam – and that’s what we love about it. It’s like that Denis Leary joke where his Irish dad arrives in the US and declares, “You can keep all that freedom and democracy, I just want some of that goddamn panelling!” Well, you can keep your revolution and evolution and tectonic societal shifts; just keep those monkey gladiators and haiku critiques coming.

Which brings us to literal videos on YouTube. Besides being very entertaining, they’re an almost perfect encapsulation of everything that makes the internet great (or awful, depending on your standpoint): daft, disposable, instant, off-beat, tongue-in-cheek and almost sublimely pointless. (There’d be no point to it if it had a point, if you follow me.) It works like this: you take a music video, blank out the vocals and record your own over the original music, with one key proviso: the new lyrics describe exactly what’s happening on screen at that moment, in a witty way.

So, for instance, in the wildly funny skit on Safety Danceby Men Without Hats, the frontman sings: "So I skip through a meadow, midget follows right behind, see him play the lute in a silly little suit . . ." all of which we're watching that very instant. Lyric subtitles also run along the bottom of the screen.

When done well, literal videos are very, very amusing. And, as opposed to much of the drivel washed up by the tsunami of Web 2.0 (all those blogs and Tweets about how my child is so cute and my cat likes kippers and here is my poorly written book review), they’re also clever, knowing, inventive and fully aware of just how silly and childish all this is.

The concept was invented by Californian animator Dustin McLean, who rejigged A-Ha’s classic “scribbly drawing” Take on Me promo. It got two million YouTube hits within two months.

The best literal videos (some good starters are Safety Dance, Love is a Battlefield, Total Eclipse of the Heartand White Wedding) spoof "narrative" promos: those videos, usually from the 1980s, that tell a story through ludicrous set-ups, overblown imagery and a pretty tenuous connection to the actual lyrics.

The humour is self-reflexive, though generally affectionate. Again from Safety Dance, the singer muses, when confronted with a bizarre medieval pageant, "gotta say, this is weird, even for an '80s band."

And, crucially, the vocals have to be good. Not just in key (whoever's behind the terrible version of Avril Lavigne's Girlfriendneeds singing lessons) but a decent approximation of the original singer's voice and mannerisms. So we have

Bonnie Tyler’s navvy-with-a-throat-infection holler, Morten Harket’s castrato wail, Billy Idol’s guttural sneer.

Music and arts journalist Nadine O'Regan, who presents pop culture magazine show The Kioskon Phantom FM, reckons literal videos are, yes, "exactly what the internet was invented for. At their best, they're laugh-out-loud funny, extremely inventive and very sharp in their portrayal of just how ridiculous and over-the-top many music videos – particularly from the 1980s – are. Admittedly some are wince-inducingly poor, but at least a few deserve to be seen by millions, and they have been."

This much is true: literal videos can now safely be designated an internet phenomenon. You can even buy T-shirts and other merchandise with "pipe wrench fight", one of the great lines from the Take On Me reworking, on McLean's site.

There’s also the nostalgia factor, another fundamental driving force in modern culture. “They’re a great way of watching those 1980s videos again from a whole new perspective,” says O’Regan. “We’re having a communal viewing experience watching these videos now, in a way that wasn’t possible decades ago. It’s a new and very interesting form.

“I don’t necessarily think they’re funnier or smarter than the other forms such as blogs, Twitter or Facebook but they’re an original medium, something we haven’t seen before. Sure, they’re not going to change the world – but it’s interesting to think YouTube may be responsible for giving rise to entirely new, witty and fun forms of expression in pop culture. And thousands of new people are being introduced to particular songs. It could be a career reinvention for artists if they play it right.”

For more visit youtube.com and search for “literal videos”