Cast your mind back to the early 90s when movie soundtracks were still a huge deal. You’ll probably remember the Bryan Adams power-ballad (Everything I Do) I Do It for You from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.
It spent a massive 16 consecutive weeks at number one on the UK Singles Chart, the longest in history and a record Drake came within a whisker of matching earlier this year with Once Dance.
Adams’s song is one of those spectacularly earnest earworms that’s perfectly suited to parody. Some 18 years after Adams cemented his rock icon status with the Robin Hood tune, Family Guy put together a brilliant spoof for their 2009 episode Ocean’s Three and a Half.
In the episode, talking despot baby Stewie Griffin falls hard for Joe and Bonnie Swanson’s daughter Susie and articulates his love with an epic cover of the Adams anthem.
It comes complete with an extended three-minute ‘music video’, which finds Seth MacFarlane on fine form crooning out the love song.
The track has been covered by everyone from Brandy to Arrested Development’s Gob, but nobody nails the 90s pomposity quite like Stewie/MacFarlane.
What makes the clip even better is the slew of references to other famous music promos the Family Guy animators laced throughout. Watch out for:-
- Stewie appearing in Lego form as a reference to White Stripes’s Fell In Love With A Girl
- Breaking a TV with a lamp like in Muse’s Hysteria
- The pencil-drawn animation of A-ha’s Take On Me
- Stewie dancing around a room of candles apes The Police’s Wrapped Around Your Finger
Clever stuff, right? It’s a Bryan Adams tribute that’s both gently poking and hugely affectionate.
Bask in the full glory of Stewie Griffin’s Bryan Adams cover below: