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LYRICSNVERSE INTRODUCES Tay Zonday.
LYRICSNVERSE WHILE BROWSING YAHOO CAME ON THIS GUY BY A LUCKY HAPPENCHANCE EEER HAPPENSTANCE!
Although a novice, Zonday apparently knew enough about stage names to know that he wanted one. And so ADAM BAHNER, the
grad student, became Tay Zonday, the musician with the YouTube channel.
Zonday said there's no "particular significance" to the name Tay Zonday, "other than that it is memorable
and produced no Google results when I chose it." (Today, it produces more than 650,000.)
On Sunday,5th Aug? you could get Tay Zonday on the phone. But that was before.
Before he was on Jimmy Kimmel. Before his YouTube video, "Chocolate Rain," logged another half-million or so
views, and neared the 4.4 million mark. Before the John Mayer cover went viral in a big way.
Before Zonday's voice-mail box got too full to take any more messages.
And, no, you haven't lived until you've heard a man with a voice borrowed from God by way of James Earl Jones say, "Gosh."
Just as you haven't lived in this Internet age until you've seen Zonday's claim to sudden fame.
Posted on YouTube in April, "Chocolate Rain" is four minutes and 52 seconds of one insane and/or insanely catchy
riff, played over and over and over. Again and again and again.
It is either the song of summer, as Kimmel has declared, something to be filed under "Confusing Internet Phenomenon
I Simply Don't Understand," per one Spin editor who gave it a listen upon request, or a cross between "a rough diamond
[and] a polished turd," in the words of admiring "Chocolate Rain" parodist Russ Houghton
One thing's for sure, according to Tay Zonday, it's no joke.I am Tay Zonday," Zonday said, when asked if he was the
all-new lonelygirl15, an actor affecting an innocent Netizen pose. "And that is my video."
And this is his song: Twelve verses, one chorus and 48 recitations of the mantra, "chocolate rain," which despite
one definition at urbandictionary.com seems to be a social comment, rather than a bedroom proclivity.
Zonday provides the vocals, which makes for an arresting image in the video in that he sounds like the aforementioned
God and Jones, but looks like the post-Urkel Jaleel White.
"I get a lot of messages asking is my voice real," Zonday told you, when he had time to tell you. "Just
watching the video, [people ask] is that voice coming out of that body?"
The Kimmel appearance also proved another of Zonday's assertions: That his "Chocolate Rain" move of stepping
away from the mic to gather a breath is neither a Zonday trademark nor a Zonday tradition. And, indeed, on Kimmel, Zonday
barely blinked, much less turned away from the mic. The walk-away technique, he said, was "just a breathing method I
chose for that video."
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