It’s Fiction.
But I want to say first that this was hard. Like, harder even than I expected. Parry Gripp was the Official Judge, but we conferred a fair amount, and basically the conferring consisted of us saying, isn’t this one awesome? And this one? And what about that one? I spent a lot of last week just letting the playlist autorepeat on YouTube, running through it over and over again. The individual interpretations are so different that I forgot I was listening to the same song.
In the end we chose Fiction. Check out their video if you haven’t, it’s the total package: passion, musicianship, lush harmonies, and a beautiful video with split-screen and what appears to be a guitar-cam. It’s an incredibly gorgeous and unique take on the song. Nobody else could have done it. I love it more than I can even describe.
And then there was so much other good stuff, we had to pick some honorable mentions too. We couldn’t not. They are these:
We’re going to send you guys signed copies of both the Magicians books, plus a vinyl single of Parry’s excellent song “The Girl at the Video Game Store,” which IMHO is one of the best nerd-pop songs ever recorded, and a “Baby Monkey” t-shirt. I apologize for the slight randomness of this package — I didn’t realize that we were going to give out honorable mentions, but then … too much awesomeness. Please accept them as tokens of my love and gratitude and admiration.
[P.s. if you're one of the above, please e-mail me so I can hook you up: lev dot grossman at g mail dot com.]
And please don’t think that if your video isn’t up here that we didn’t watch it, and re-watch it, and put it on repeat and rock out to it. Chances are we did. It’s in the crude nature of these contests that we don’t get to show you that, but it’s true nevertheless. I am so grateful to everyone who entered.
This whole thing made my year.
I sincerely hope mine was not rewatched. I’m going to wait 2 weeks and then delete it, and it never happened. Congrats to everyone! I’m in a coffee shop so I can’t listen to them right now, but I look forward to it.
Nooooo!
That is the nicest thing anyone has ever said about anything I have ever been a part of.
Super cool of you guys to give out extra gifts. I will be listening to all of those songs for a long time. So no, Jaimie, don’t take yours down!
Jaime, don’t you dare. Steven, you totally deserve it. ROCKIN entry. And I’m so glad the fucking elves got an honorable mention.
Such a fun contest. LOVE all the entries!
I really liked yours, Jaime. You have a nice voice, and you’re funny! You also take great pictures of Italy.
This contest was a lot of fun for me, and I loved all of the entries, but it was very difficult to pick a winner.
I think you made the right choice. Congrats to Fiction! I had fun getting back into recording, so thanks much for this contest (wish i had time to make a video).
-aaron
@Parry, I’m glad I wasn’t responsible for choosing! There were so many great entries. I loved them all. My kids had so much fun making the Minecraft world & then filming the video… two weekends of family fun! Thank you for the opportunity. AND I love the song! We walk around the house singing bits of it to each other all day now. :p
@Parry – Thanks! Italy takes great pictures of itself. I went with family and had a hellish time (anxiety meds were ingested), but otherwise a beautiful place.
I had a lot of fun with this contest too. It was a good excuse to try Garage Band then decide Garage Band was too complicated then try some other audio mixer and then DO IT LIVE, fuck it.
That was VERY well done. Congratulations to Fiction!!
@Jaimie Don’t take your video down. You have a lovely voice.
Ooooh they’re all great! When does the album come out??
A bit late, but I just want to say that I’ve had a few stressful and sleep lacking weeks, and listening to all the entries to this competion really helped me keep my spirits up.
So thanks so much to all of you!