Like watching an emergent improv band forming around a cat drinking milk

November 15, 2021 2:12 PM

It started with Leo the cat, happily and loudly lapping up milk from a spoon; using TikTok's duet feature, people added onto it and built an awesome song.

Hat tip to Debbie Mia on Twitter. Previously on Metafilter, numnum cat with The Kiffness, and a duet chain of a musical number about a break-up in a grocery store.

posted by Pronoiac (44 comments total)

Oh, man! That's adorable!
posted by Multicellular Exothermic at 2:16 PM on November 15, 2021 [3 favorites]

oustanding
posted by j_curiouser at 2:17 PM on November 15, 2021

Ok but it sounded like there was a banjo we never saw?
posted by emjaybee at 2:28 PM on November 15, 2021

It’s just so danged delightful. Like milk on a spoon, I can’t get enough.
posted by iamkimiam at 2:31 PM on November 15, 2021 [1 favorite]

Ok so is the cat REALLY making those sounds in the original video?
posted by rogerroger at 2:39 PM on November 15, 2021 [6 favorites]

This is... unexpectedly... my jam.
posted by gwint at 3:10 PM on November 15, 2021 [9 favorites]

Please do check out the original duet by Sherzod Ergashev, and see the rest of his channel. He does TikTok tomfoolery with neat Central Asian instruments and performs duets with other traditional musicians.
posted by xthlc at 3:13 PM on November 15, 2021 [14 favorites]

I get deliriously happy every time I see vibing cat, and this numnum cat entry continues the streak

is unboomerable a word (I mean, it is now).. but when people can collaborate and create so easily, the idea of scarcity and manufactured stardom that informed my consumption of music (forever) kind of seems.. irrelevant. Here's to dog fart beats and enduring cat meow anthems, forever (and I'll leave it to kids in the 2030s to point out all the ways this was unfair and unethical to the dog/cat)
posted by elkevelvet at 3:16 PM on November 15, 2021 [7 favorites]

THIS is what I wanted the Internet to be like, more of this please
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:23 PM on November 15, 2021 [47 favorites]

I don't know what I just watched, I just know that I am delighted.
posted by Kitteh at 3:25 PM on November 15, 2021 [5 favorites]

Leo was a fan of leekspin back in the day...
posted by Windopaene at 3:45 PM on November 15, 2021 [4 favorites]

Oh so good...I've always been envious of people who can make music. It's still a foreign language to me....They were all great but that last guy blew me away...
posted by Czjewel at 3:52 PM on November 15, 2021 [1 favorite]

So, thanks to the Twitter link I now understand that the two ladies were singing Nature Boy, first recorded by Nat King Cole and later featured in the movie Moulin Rouge. But what was the guy singing? A Google search of the lyrics turns up nothing.
posted by polecat at 3:56 PM on November 15, 2021 [6 favorites]

Hmm. I drilled a little deeper into the Twitter and they assert its his own lyrics.
posted by polecat at 3:59 PM on November 15, 2021 [2 favorites]

The dude's lyrics definitely felt like his own. Really off-meter and clunky at a couple spots and it felt like he was trying way too hard to be some kind of upbeat Tom Waits character. All the other spots were neat.
posted by Philipschall at 4:04 PM on November 15, 2021 [10 favorites]

Also that totes looked like Aaron Eckhart on drums in the v beginning.
posted by Kitteh at 4:05 PM on November 15, 2021 [1 favorite]

I found this variant while looking around the numnumcat tag, which goes a little differently.
posted by miguelcervantes at 4:10 PM on November 15, 2021 [1 favorite]

If you look at that guy's TikTok, he does a lot of freestyling over other videos. That's why the rhythm was a bit different and the words not quite sensible - he's making it up as he goes along.
posted by xthlc at 4:13 PM on November 15, 2021 [1 favorite]

the spilled-milk crossover is a nice touch.
posted by Greg_Ace at 4:13 PM on November 15, 2021 [1 favorite]

This was totally the picker-upper I needed today! Made me stupidly happy…
posted by rambling wanderlust at 4:15 PM on November 15, 2021

happily and loudly lapping up milk from a spoon

Based on my experience with cats, I think Leo is somewhat grumpily lapping up milk. Doesn't make it any less delightful, though, and the song is brilliant.
posted by tclark at 4:17 PM on November 15, 2021 [4 favorites]

hey, he's playing a Tar!

the story behind the song Nature Boy is interesting.
posted by ovvl at 4:44 PM on November 15, 2021 [6 favorites]

Yeah, a klezmer Nature Boy with cats...
posted by jim in austin at 4:59 PM on November 15, 2021 [4 favorites]

Are there any contemporary bands that still write original music in this style? I liked me some Squirrel Nut Zippers back in the day but that seemed like a pretty solitary ping on the pop culture radar. I wouldn’t know where to start on a deeper dig.
posted by dephlogisticated at 5:40 PM on November 15, 2021 [2 favorites]

Are there any contemporary bands that still write original music in this style?

You might like The Scarring Party, who had I guess a little bit of notoriety around the single No More Room In Hell in (holy cow) 2009. Looks like they haven't released anything since 2015, though.
posted by tclark at 6:05 PM on November 15, 2021 [5 favorites]

Ok so is the cat REALLY making those sounds in the original video?

I've decided the original is a cat getting its claws trimmed. You can hear the click from the claw timmer even in the other versions.
posted by RobotHero at 6:20 PM on November 15, 2021 [20 favorites]

emjaybee, I think the banjo sound an uzbek tar. You can see him playing it for a few seconds near the beginning of the video.
posted by umbú at 6:29 PM on November 15, 2021 [2 favorites]

Are there any contemporary bands that still write original music in this style?

If contemporary can mean 90s, the Squirrel Nut Zippers.
posted by dobbs at 7:02 PM on November 15, 2021 [4 favorites]

And yes, that last singer is definitely influenced by Tom Waits' 80s trilogy of Swordfishtrombones, Rain Dogs, and Franks Wild Years, but I assume you knew that.
posted by dobbs at 7:10 PM on November 15, 2021 [1 favorite]

I now need to go kill this earworm.
posted by humbug at 7:25 PM on November 15, 2021

Nice find, RobotHero, on the OC (Original Cat) being a completely different cat getting its nails clipped!

I liked the lyrics of the 3rd singer. They were a bit clunky but I think they were evocative and made sense if you parsed them. Towns of ash with a music-born sickness... The more you dance the more you grow finished--this means the revelers are burning themselves out with mad dancing, just like fire turning wood to ash. You won't leave in rhythm--because everyone's getting real drunk as they dance.
posted by Schmucko at 7:26 PM on November 15, 2021 [1 favorite]

Are there any contemporary bands that still write original music in this style?

Yup. Do a YouTube search on electro-swing and/or electro-klezmer. That will be a little broader than you’re looking for, but you should find some links to follow up on from the various compilations that will pop up.
posted by eviemath at 7:33 PM on November 15, 2021 [7 favorites]

Personally, I though the third guy's singing went way better with the spirit of all the other instruments, clunky or no, whereas Nature Boy seemed to rather clash in parts. Was Nature Boy in a different key or something on those higher notes? It felt... wrong, to me. (I am in no way a music person and often have Very Wrong opinions about songs)
posted by stillnocturnal at 2:07 AM on November 16, 2021

THIS is what I wanted the Internet to be like, more of this please

I'm not sure it was the best trade for living in a civil society.
posted by fairmettle at 2:12 AM on November 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

Are there any contemporary bands that still write original music in this style?

Search for "dark cabaret"
posted by Tom-B at 5:19 AM on November 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

Was Nature Boy in a different key or something on those higher notes? It felt... wrong, to me.

You are correct! That spot in the Nature Boy melody doesn’t match with the chords of the cat song. The second singer compensated for this but the first one didn’t.
posted by saturday_morning at 5:19 AM on November 16, 2021 [4 favorites]

When this was posted on reddit, somebody said, "There ought to be a subreddit for this kind of thing."

And, lo, Musical Jenga was born. (I know, I know-- Jenga involves taking things out, whereas this kind of collaboration involves putting layers in. Look, I didn't create the subreddit. I'm just newly addicted to it.)
posted by yankeefog at 7:26 AM on November 16, 2021

Are there any contemporary bands that still write original music in this style?

Katzenjammer was the first thing I thought of.
posted by castlebravo at 8:05 AM on November 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

The band Caravan Palace is worth checking out if you like this kind of thing.
posted by EarBucket at 4:04 PM on November 16, 2021

So that was waaaay better than I was expecting : )
posted by genuinely curious at 7:10 PM on November 16, 2021

I'm pretty sure the first "Nature Boy" singer is the Google Translate Sings lady. (slyt)
posted by Ursula Hitler at 1:18 AM on November 17, 2021 [1 favorite]

This is great, thank you for posting it! And ovvl, thank you for that link to the history of Nature Boy, I had no idea!
posted by LobsterMitten at 7:14 AM on November 17, 2021

So, I was curious about Nature Boy, and checked out that Wikipedia page.
Nature Boy was written by eden abhez, who considered it somewhat autobiographical. It was given to Nat King Cole, who made it into a hit. Later, it was used for the theme of the 1948 anti-war film "The Boy With Green Hair", staring a twelve-year-old Dean Stockwell. Who was in "Entertainment" with John C. Reiley, who was in "The River Wild" with .... Kevin Bacon.
posted by Xiphias Gladius at 5:55 AM on November 18, 2021 [3 favorites]

I still really like the song but let me tell ya I'm going kind of nuts with this earworm of a cat going budd-dubba-num-num...
posted by Ursula Hitler at 2:27 AM on November 19, 2021 [1 favorite]