TEXT: 100th VIDEO BIRTHDAY SONGS

My career as a YouTube animator is approaching its 10th anniversary next month. In fact, exactly a month from now! October 18th! I suppose I should reveal my special plans for this date:

For the anniversary, I'm releasing a video where I cover every song I wrote for the Birthday Dodecagon series. If you don't know, since it was my earliest series ever on the channel, made before I had any kind of traction, Birthday Dodecagon was a series of videos I made every year to celebrate my birthday. The joke was initially the upside downed-ness of making a gift animation that celebrated my own birthday instead of someone else's, but it quickly became its own thing entirely.

In each of the Birthday Dodecagon videos, I would write a small song set to the melody of Earthbound music as rearranged for the Super Smash Bros. series. For example, the first video had me sing to "Bein' Friends" from Earthbound from Super Smash Bros. Melee, but with the lyrics changed to be about my birthday. And then in each video, I would choose a new song from Earthbound from Super Smash Bros. to sing new words to.

Why did I do this? Well, for the tradition of it. It was a series about birthdays, so there were a lot of traditions I adhered to in the making of them.

Anyways... Yes! I'm going to cover all 5 songs from that series as my 10-year-anniversary video. Oh, it's also going to double as my 100th video. Right now I'm at 97 videos!

I won't just cover the songs, though. I'm also extending them! Sometimes these songs were just 5-10 second jingles as opposed to full blown musical numbers, so I'm extending them! That means writing all new lyrics. So far, that has been a little tricky... I mean, for most of these songs, I put almost no effort into writing them, but for this, I want to try a little harder! I think it would be fun.

Here's a couple of them that I'm still in the process of writing:

FIFTEEN SONG (to the tune of Bein' Friends)

Aren’t you so happy today’s my birthday?

Think of all the stuff that I can do.

Ain’t that the most blessed thing you could say?

When you just know that your wish has come true.

I can’t help but feel like my whole life was meant for this

(Can’t believe it’s like a dream)

Swear that even before I turned five I’ve waited for this

(Just for me to be fifteen)

Years old, man, how could i have planned

For it all to turn out so grand?

O Dodecagon

Has it been so long?

To think I’d still have

Been singing your songs.

Reminisce on

(All the years that have passed, how much my life has changed, how i never asked for the trajectory it took) (This part I still need to write)

Birthday Dodecagon

Birthday Dodecagon

Anniversary remix by

Painter Seap

As you can see, I only have one little bit in parenthesis that I still need to write. I've been struggling! The ironic thing is that, like I said, the original song took ZERO effort to write, but now I'm over here stressing like "Is this too contrived? Is this too meaningless?" Ahh, maybe that just shows how much I've changed...

NINETEEN SONG (to the tune of Unfounded Revenge)

I see that look on you

I do, I do, I do, I do

Not understand your plan

But you’ve got me so enticed

Just use me how you please

I need, I need, I need, I need

Anything so I sing

Just don’t let the rhythm die

I shouldn’t like it this way

Yet I don’t think I’m perturbed

When I look at you and say

You’ve got just what I deserve

Set me into your sight

Take me under your wing

Let me into your life

Make me into your thing

I know that you’ve all thought

I’m not, I’m not, I’m not, I’m not

All that great or that sacred

So lemme take your heat

This one is also unfinished, but I'm pretty proud with the progress made so far. What's helping this one is that, in the original video, Birthday Dodecagon 5: I Never Nineteen Wine, even though only a couple lines of the song were sung, I actually had a little bit more of it written in my head. I guess I somehow just never forgot about it, so writing the rest has come very naturally.

This song is actually kind of about something, but it's got nothing to do with birthdays. I guess it's about someone with really low self-esteem who meets someone with possibly impure intentions, and then that former someone is just so desperate and excited to be of any use to someone that they beg for whatever treatment they're about to get.

Yeah... I honestly don't know what pit of my soul this came from. It's not really about myself, but it's still a pretty vivid story. Well, that's the thing with stories, and most creative ideas in general: They just come to you somehow.

There's still three other songs I'm working on! Well, two; the one from The Eighteen Contessa is actually pretty fully-formed as is so I'm just going to be singing the exact same song again. I remember actually being kind of unhappy with the take I did when I originally made that video, my throat might have been a bit sore and so I wasn't hitting it the way I wanted, so that will be a fun attempt at redemption.

Look forward to this video! It won't be a full-blown animation, but still, I hope it will feel special. I have at least one other "thing" planned for the 10th anniversary that's going to be a lot of fun, so STAY TUNED!