| “ | Accent on the Yo! | ” |
―Schmoyoho | ||
The Gregory Brothers are an American musical quartet, specializing in comedy music and pitch correction through their YouTube channel Schmoyoho, who have characterized their music as "Country & Soul, Folk & Roll".
They are best known for their creation of musical viral videos, most notably the "Winning" song that won a 2012 Comedy Award, as well as the Songify the News series (formerly known as Auto-Tune the News) and the "Bed Intruder Song" that entered the Billboard Hot 100.
The three Gregory brothers – drummer/keyboardist Michael, guitarist/bassist Andrew Rose and keyboardist Evan – originally from Radford, Virginia, moved to Brooklyn, New York in the mid-2000s and met guitarist/bassist Sarah Fullen (who married Evan in 2009) in the local music scene. The band was formed in 2007, with all four members providing vocals, often accompanying "songified" individuals.
After 10 years of activity, having earned the most views by songifying the likes of Antoine Dodson, Charlie Sheen, Paul Vasquez, and Daymon Patterson, their Schmoyoho channel reached three million subscribers in March 2017. In commemoration, the Gregory Brothers released a "mega-mashup" of their work, in which they outlined their main goal of eliciting "the maximum amount of happiness for the maximum amount of time".
Members[]
| Evan Gregory |
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| Sarah Fullen Gregory |
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| Michael Gregory |
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| Andrew Gregory |
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Viral videos[]
The Gregory Brothers (using the YouTube username 'schmoyoho') first became well known for a series of YouTube videos, Auto-Tune the News (rebranded in 2011 as Songify the News), in which recorded voices of politicians, news anchors, and political pundits were digitally manipulated to conform to a melody, making the figures appear to sing.
National television networks featured the Gregory Brothers' early political satires in the spring of 2009, but the group did not achieve mainstream recognition until the summer of 2010, when they released episode 12b of Auto-Tune the News, titled "Bed Intruder Song," which featured excerpts from an interview with alleged crime victims Kelly Dodson and her brother, Antoine Dodson. The clip went viral, becoming one of the biggest videos of 2010, and earning them a spot on the Billboard Hot 100 at number 89, making them the first ever YouTube act with a charting hit in the U.S.
Largely non-political in content, it marked a departure from the Gregory Brothers' roots in political material. Following the mainstream success of that music video, the Gregory Brothers have generally produced a mixture of both political and non-political videos.
The band is best known for the Auto-Tune and Songify series, they have created several additional videos, independent of that series, which have received broad attention. The following videos are part of their first season of Auto-Tune the News for 16 episodes.
The Gregory Brothers began to retroactively apply the series name "Songify This" to certain previously series-independent videos in late 2010, and they have released several new videos under this branding as well. The table above reflects the new "Songify This" branding where applicable.
YouTube Rewinds[]
In 2018 & 2019, the Gregory Brothers created alternative YouTube rewind videos about what that years YouTube rewind should have included or be about, their videos have overwhelming support over YouTube's Official rewind videos. His videos include a lot of remixing multiple memes together, including popular memes, and awesome music in the background of the videos, they also include events that happened throughout the year instead of what YouTube did by showing their selection of YouTuber's they wanted and didn't even highlight important events. (2018 Rewind, 2019 Rewind)
83rd Annual Academy Awards[]
The Gregory Brothers created a musical segment for the 83rd Academy Awards where they auto-tuned bits of 4 major motion pictures from 2010: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1, Toy Story 3, The Social Network, and The Twilight Saga: Eclipse.
Host James Franco comically introduced the segment as a tribute to a "great year for the movie musical." Characters who were autotuned included Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, Sheriff Woody, Sean Parker, and Edward Cullen. On July 14, 2011, it was announced that this segment earned The Gregory Brothers a nomination for a 2011 Emmy award in the category "Outstanding Short-Form Picture Editing." Only Michael and Evan are nominated as there is a two-person nomination limit in this category.
While only those four aired, an alternative cut was released on the official 2011 Grammy Awards YouTube channel on February 27, 2011, featuring an auto-tuned version of The King's Speech in place of The Social Network.
"Double Rainbow Song"[]
In July 2010, the Gregory Brothers released an auto-tuned version of the Double Rainbow viral video. The original video featured the overawed reaction of Paul "Hungry Bear" Vasquez to a double rainbow at Yosemite National Park. The Gregory Brothers turned Vasquez's astounding speech into a song and pledged all of the song's earnings to Vasquez and Yosemite.
Musical collaborations[]
The Gregory Brothers appear as members of the Welcome Wagon Choir on The Welcome Wagon's 2009 debut album Welcome to the Welcome Wagon, produced by Sufjan Stevens. The Welcome Wagon is a project headed by Presbyterian minister Vito Aiuto and his wife, Monique. The Gregory Brothers had also done a cover of the Sufjan Stevens song "The Dress Looks Nice on You", which was included on the Seven Swans Reimagined album by On Joyful Wings.
The Gregory Brothers often perform live with Sarah Gregory's band The Stanleys. The group was commissioned to compose the theme song for the Netflix series Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, which was based on their "Bed Intruder Song".
Andrew Gregory also has his own band called Andrew Rose Gregory & The Color Red Band. The band also includes Jay Foote, Alex Foote and Evan Mazunik, as well as Sarah Gregory.
Song Voyage[]
Song Voyage (a play-on-words on "bon voyage") is a The Station web series starring the four Gregory Brothers, who are also co-creators and co-producers along with Portal A Interactive. Directed by Dan Eckman, the comedy travel series features the Gregory Brothers visiting nations in the Asia-Pacific region and collaborating with local musicians to create original novelty songs. It has been described as "a musical twist on an Anthony Bourdain show." The series premiered on Sling TV, after which episodes began being released on the Gregory Brothers' second YouTube channel in December 2016, while music videos from within each episode were also released on the main Schmoyoho channel.
