Tom Green! You remember that guy! From MTV! And from Freddy Got Fingered and Road Trip and Charlie’s Angels! If you are too young to remember Tom Green, I truly don’t know why you’re here. You must have a very curious mind, and I commend you for that. You are out here trying to learn about history, about the world, and I’m afraid you aren’t going to pick much up here. If you weren’t there for it, the Tom Green phenomenon is an extremely difficult thing to explain. But it happened. He was a big deal. He’ll probably always be passively famous in the way that people who were on MTV in the ’90s will always be passively famous.
Among many other things, Tom Green is a hitmaking musician. Green’s 1999 single “Lonely Swedish (The Bum Bum Song)” never reached the Hot 100, but it was a #1 hit on TRL when that meant something. It’s always fun to see what happens when a hitmaking musician covers an indie rock song. The last time that Green was on this website, it was because he and Mac DeMarco are buds, which makes sense. Now, Green has posted a video of himself covering Kurt Vile, which makes its own kind of sense. Specifically, he covered Vile’s great 2015 song “Pretty Pimpin,” which now that I think about it is probably the most Tom Green song that Kurt Vile has ever made.
Yesterday, Tom Green posted an Instagram video where he plays a solo-acoustic version of “Pretty Pimpin” in what looks like a very nice kitchen. He does pretty well with it, too. A cool thing about Kurt Vile is that you don’t really have to be Whitney Houston to sing one of his songs. You just have to show some personality. Green has plenty of that, even when he’s not dialed all the way up. In the caption, Green wrote, “I love the music of @kurtvile.” The feeling is mutual. In the comments, Vile wrote, “Love you Tom Green !!!” Below, check out Green’s cover and Vile’s original video.
Earlier this year, Kurt Vile and his friend Luke Roberts released the collaborative EP Classic Love. Wikipedia tells me that Tom Green is currently developing three different projects for Amazon. Get that money, Tom Green.
