Signed by KISS

I don’t watch a lot of TV. But the other night I was struck by insomnia, and turned to my mum’s Sky box for solace. Things were looking bleak until I found out that late at night on the music request channels they have a bit where someone signs along with the music in the bottom right of the screen.

I could go on for a while here, but basically I got entranced by trying to match up the lyrics with the sign language, and also by the body motions and looks of the signers.

So for example, here we have a lovely middle aged lady singing/signing along to We be burnin’ by Jamaican reggae MC Sean Paul.


I quickly discovered they don’t sign every word, and just use a couple of signs to get the meaning of the line or couplet across. I am guessing everyone already knew this about international sign language apart from me.

It’s a massively interesting communication challenge – translate something very complex from one sensory input to another entirely different one – a seemingly impossible task that they do really well. Makes you realise what bits of what people say/do are and aren’t important.

On a lighter note, they seem to try to utterly mismatch the look and tone of the signers with the songs as much as possible.

Here then are some bits of video for you to check out. Click the pictures to get to the videos (right click save as, or open them, whatever, it’s up to you). They’re are off my phone and should play in Quicktime.


Hey Ya!
The motion for Hey Ya, near the end, is cool. I wonder what it means.


Killers – Somebody Told Me
Note the air guitar and air drumming



Some sweet R&B front room track



Christina Aguilera – Dirrty
I can really get what the guy is saying on this.

I tried turning the sound off and dancing along with the Right Said Fred-esque guy on Hey Ya, but I really couldn’t follow, and when I turned the volume back on I was way off beat. Oh well.