Explaining the Obvious: Maria Aragon, K’Naan, Matisyahu, Lady Gaga

How many of us have seen that commercial for the new phone that shows a young Asian girl, she is clearly amateur and possibly a YouTube sensation, singing

“When I get older, I will be stronger…”

Show of hands, who knows this commercial? Ok, a couple. Me, when I saw it I was at first reminded of one of my all-time favorite YouTube clips:

Yeah, I know, this Applegirl is Asian but playing on iPhones, and the “When I get older” girl is on a piano. Trust me, my confusion only gets worse before it gets better. If anything it speaks to my eternal awe of Applegirl. I still find that clip just amazing.

The “When I get older” girl has just a few seconds of a commercial; her moment comes and goes and you’re like “that was nice, what was it?”

When I looked at Applegirl I realized instantly that no, it was not Applegirl singing “when I get older…” Which, let’s face it, sounded very familiar. Here’s, sort of, the rub:

The phone being advertised is made by a company called HTC. I didn’t know HTC and still don’t, but let’s just say that googling “verizon when I get older” and “at&t when I get older” wasn’t getting me anywhere. HTC makes, I guess, super-souped-up phones, and someday we will all have HTC phones instead of brains and frankly (if this blog post is any guide) be much better off.

But “When I get older…” what was that? Well a quick search revealed it was this:

Damn, I knew I knew that song!!! World Cup 2010, yo!!! Except… I thought World Cup 2010 yo was by Matisyahu. No, that’s this song, which was affiliated with the World Cup but not the official song:

No doubt, side-by-side, they are different songs. But their inspirational message is so damn similarly awesome. Really I do like both songs a lot. But you know that moment you had when you realized Michael Cera and Jesse Eisenberg weren’t the same actor? I had that moment — I was like, I like you both, but I just thought you were the same. You’re still good actors, but your batting average just went down.

Yes, yes, but what happened to the Asian girl in the HTC commercial? Well her name, as it turns out, is Maria Aragon; she is Filipino from Canada. Here she is doing Wavin’ Flag:

But why? Why is this video of her doing “Wavin’ Flag” deserving of a big-ass commercial for HTC? It’s got less than a million YouTube views — peanuts for the so-called “next sensation.” I call bullshit.

Oh, but her cover of “Born this Way” has 36 million views. So… yeah, that’s valid. I un-call bullshit:

Here’s the original commercial, btw:

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