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Pinsent Reads Bieber

Having someone read teeny-bopper prose or lyrics in an authoritative or otherwise incongruous voice is an old joke, but it usually works. The latest example is the “This Hour Has 22 Minutes” video where Gordon Pinsent reads from the memoirs of Justin Bieber.

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As I said, this usually happens with lyrics, though it occasionally happens with books as well — the record “The Baroque Beatles Book,” where Beatles songs were transmogrified into Bach-style concertos and cantatas, took an excerpt from one of John Lennon’s children’s books and set it as a Baroque recitative. The most affectionate and enduring version of this idea is Peter Sellers’ recitation of “Hard Day’s Night” in the style of Laurence Olivier; the nastiest version was Steve Allen’s tendency to read rock n’ roll lyrics without the music in an attempt to show how stupid they supposedly were.

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