Strollerderby
Alllllvin! Everyone’s Favorite Chipmunk is Fifty
Who ever thought a trio of orphaned chipmunks with high-pitched squeaks would be the next boy band to make it big? Thanks to that (now very rich) somebody, we’re about to spend a fiftieth year listening to Alvin, Simon and Theadore butcher, er, sing our favorite tunes. They’ve given up on the hula hoop. This year the iPod’s the thing.
Ross Bagdasarian was having a hard time making the mortgage payments (and this is different because?) fifty years ago when he used a tape recorder to speed up the vocals on a song he’d just written and gave birth to pint-sized rodents with a knack for chirping out hits. I was too busy with a toddler to make it to the theater when Alvin and the Chipmunks hit the big screen last year, but it grossed $217 million in the states alone. Alvin and the Chipmunks: the Squeakuel is expected to hit theaters next Christmas.
So what has given the little squeakers staying power for half a century? Ramin Setodeh compares the Alvin appeal to American Idol in a post on the online version of Newsweek. “Both trade in the allure of rags-to-riches insta-stardom,” he says. And ” Both acts are squeaky clean, family friendly and, to be honest, not very original.”
That last little dig aside, I’ve got to agree. With their extra-long t-shirts and their boys will be boys get-into-trouble streak, they remind me of my little brother as a toddler tooling around the house and belting out the select words he could remember from the latest radio hit. They’re short, fuzzy and they haven’t lost that impish streak that makes every little kid want to be their friend. Fifty’s been kind to the chipmunks, but the new version of their Christmas classic is packing the years on me – what’s this about Alvin dumping his hula hoop hopes?
Image: Amazon
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