Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt theme song creators the Gregory Brothers credit their success to YouTube.
The Gregory Brothers
“As a person in the world, you can go viral, and that’s how people discover things—on the Internet,” says Evan Gregory of musical group the Gregory Brothers, creators of the popular re-mixed theme song for hit Netflix series, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.
The band—consisting of Radford natives Evan, Andrew, Michael, and Evan’s wife Sarah (from San Antonio, Texas)—owes much of its own fame to YouTube. Though the group began as a conventional band, touring and even releasing an EP, things began to take off in 2009 when they started making songs and videos from people speaking—re-arranging the voice of, say, Charlie Sheen or a prospective presidential candidate, setting it to music and adding a hefty dose of autotune. The videos grew into a YouTube series that didn’t take long to go viral. One of their hits, “Bed Intruder,” has been viewed more than 131 million times.
Their Internet popularity caught the attention of series producer and star Tina Fey, who, with co-creator Robert Carlock, asked the Gregory Brothers to remix the show’s theme song (written by Fey’s husband Jeff Richmond). The series premiered in 2015. “We sort of thought of ourselves as a band,” says Evan, “but now the world is telling us video is our thing.” TheGregoryBrothers.com
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