Bart Baker

Bart Baker (born May 5, 1986) is an American comedian, musician, singer, and videographer. His best-known works are his parodies of popular songs made for his YouTube channel; his parody of Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines won a 2014 Webby Award for Maker Studios.
Baker joined YouTube in 2006 and posted a number of short comedic sketches before releasing his first viral video, "California Gurls", in 2010.
Biography
Baker was born in Chicago, Illinois and grew up in the suburb of Winnetka, where he attended New Trier High School. His first videos were created as a way to present reports in class, starting in 5th grade. After his parents bought him his own computer and video camera, he made several amateur action films with his friends.
Not quite 2 years after YouTube launched, Baker registered the BartBaKer channel; he started uploading videos in early 2007. His earliest post is of a music video he made as a high school assignment in which he and a number of classmates lipsync'ed the Big Tymers' song "Get Your Roll On".
Baker chose to attend the University of Miami to study film. When home between semesters, he and his friends would tape occasional comedy sketches that Baker would post to his channel. In the summers, he interned at the Illinois Film Office, through which he worked on the sets of the movies "Osso Bucco" and "The Promotion", both shot in Chicago. Baker graduated with a double major in Film/Video and Art and a minor in Psychology.
Early career
After graduating from college, Baker was not sure what he wanted to do, but he was pretty sure it would be something that made use of his talents in directing, shooting, and editing videos. He earned a salary editing promo spots for The Jerry Springer Show
YouTube videos
As of November 1, 2014, Bart Baker has uploaded 184 videos to his primary YouTube channel, of which 73 would be considered parodies—72 songs and one of a videotaped deposition of Justin Bieber. He has also uploaded 43 videos to his secondary channel, named simply "Bart", mainly consisting of vlogs, behind the scenes footage, bloopers, and the like.
Song Parodies
Baker’s parodies are true parodies in the legal sense—he makes fun of other people’s music videos. In the United States, the legal doctrine of "fair use" includes the right to parody the works of other people . Baker used to have frequent problems with the artists and publishers of the songs he parodies, where they would file copyright claims with YouTube and get his videos removed. He would have to have his lawyer call these publishers (or their lawyers) to explain the law covering fair use, after which YouTube would put his videos back up.
On December 7, 2013, Lorde’s publisher went so far as to file a legal complaint (called a “Take Down”) with YouTube over Baker's parody of “Royals” and YouTube told Baker he would have to sue Lorde’s publisher before they would restore his video. Baker proceeded to post a video asking his viewers to tweet and email the publisher and Lorde to look up the legal principles of fair use. The video received about 500,000 views by that Sunday and the publisher dropped their Take Down complaint, allowing Baker to re-upload the video.
"Wrecking Ball", based on the Miley Cyrus song, is Bart's most-viewed parody, with over 55 million views since being released on October 5, 2013. Ron Jeremy and Steve-O make cameo appearances.
Baker's fastest-rising parody to date, reaching 1,000,000 views in just over 24 hours and 25,000,000 views in 50 days, is of the Nicki Minaj song "Anaconda". It may also be his most controversial, having sparked some debate in the press about whether his lyrics about the way Minaj and the other women in her original video (and the parody) dress and twerk are sexist.
As of November 12, his recent parody is "Love Me Harder" by Ariana Grande and The Weeknd.
Accomplishments and Awards
At this point, Baker often enjoys more than 2,000,000 views a day and has over 1 billion total views and 4 million YouTube “subscribers.”
The first in a series of parodies of Taylor Swift songs, Bart's take on "I Knew You Were Trouble" was designated Music Parody Video of the Year 2013 by Tubular Labs.
In May 2014, Baker won a Webby Award in the category Online Film/Video: Video Remixes/Mashups for his parody of “Blurred Lines".
In August 2014, Pitbull invited Baker, along with fellow social media stars Jenna Marbles and Brittany Furlan, to appear in the music video for his song "Fireball", released the following month.
On September 1, 2014 Bart was nominated by AdWeek for a “Hottest Digital Brands” award, in the category "Hottest Video Star". This is a "people's choice" award, with voting open until December 1, 2014. As of November 1, Baker has the most votes in this category.
The wardrobe team Bart uses for most of his videos, Morgan Christensen and Amanda Hosler, were nominated for a 2014 Streamy Award for Costume Design.
iTunes releases
Bart Baker has released many of his songs as downloadable files on iTunes. Indeed, the comedy singles Top 200 chart in iTunes often has several of his songs. On December 10, 2013 Baker released the album, "Greatest Hits 2013", which features fifteen of his parodies from that year.
Movie Trailer Parodies
Bart Baker has made a new type of series where he makes parodies of movie trailers. Instead of using the actual trailer, the trailer is recreated with animation by professional YouTuber Logan Hugueny-Clark (aka LHUGUENY). Bart voices all of the characters, and the voice of the stereotypical trailer narrator is provided by Roland (also a professional YouTuber).

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See Also

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