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PROVO — A fun parody of Adele’s “Hello” from a group of Brigham Young University students is making people laugh and raking in the views on YouTube.
Instead of Adele soulfully singing about a past lover, the video shows two missionaries knocking on doors and peeking through windows while trying to find people to teach about The Church of Jesus-Christ of Latter-day Saints. The video was posted Tuesday and as of late Wednesday morning, it had already drawn over 179,000 views.
Korey Smith said the idea for the parody was born when he wanted to help out his wife, who is doing an internship for LDSsmile.com. He was thinking of different ways to do that when he got together with his friend Marcus Joseph, who helped film and edit the massively popular “Dark Lord Funk” parody in 2015.
Yes, that's my son singing in this Adele Mormon missionary parody. He gets his voice from his Mama @RebeccaCressmanhttps://t.co/e7NSzoFfmu
— Dale Cressman (@cressman) April 5, 2016
“We just went to the Billboard top 10 and started going down the list, and I think Adele was No. 1 on the charts at that time,” Smith said. “As soon as we started playing the music for (“Hello”), right away both of us had the idea that this would be perfect for a Mormon parody. Right then and there we decided it’s fresh in our minds, let’s write this right now.”
The duo spent the next three hours writing the lyrics and coming up with a plot line in Marcus’ room. Then they spent several weeks looking for vocalists, eventually finding Parker Cressman for their lead and Conner Hein to be his companion.
All of the filming for the video was cranked out on one Saturday, according to Smith. He said almost everyone involved is or was a BYU student. His wife even made an appearance in the video, opening a door for the missionaries.
Smith said he and Joseph would like to continue making parody videos.
“We enjoy doing it and for us it’s kind of a good way to spread the gospel through social media,” Smith said. “We liked that aspect of it, and from the YouTube commenters, a lot of people were touched by it so that was kind of fun to see.”
