The advancement of technology, as always, opens new ways for musicians to make money. In the nineties, they started getting asked to provide music for video games, and in the naughties, for ringtones. I asked myself who will be the first star to arise out of this media, and my query was answered in 2005, with the birth of a star that was, how delightful, a virtual figure.
Crazy Frog sings in computer language, so it is only fitting that he would be the first cellular star. The sound effect was created back in 1997 by a Swedish bloke, and in 2003, another Swede attached computer animation to it, and made it the voice of a nutty and annoying frog. In 2004 the Frog was hired by a German phone company to provide their ringtone, and an aggressive campaign on TV made it popular in Europe, and also controversial, since many parents complained about the frog's visible knob corrupting the innocent soul of their children. The ad was eventually censored, but the frog itself could not be censored. Any adolescent who wanted to drive the world crazy immediately purchased the ringtone, turning their cellphone to an environmental hazard that could start cackling at any moment and shatter the nerves of anyone who was unlucky enough to be around. This was rock'n'roll at its best, a noise custom-made to annoy parents, and it did not take long for our froggie to make the natural step into music making. 'Axel F.', a remix of the Beverly Hills Cop tune, was his first record. And he kept on making gleeful remixes and ringdingding his way through many other familiar tunes, until finally he got on everybody's nerves, and vanished back into the cybernetic pond he came from.
Mark my words: Crazy Frog will return. Virtual figures will fill our lives to a growing extent in the future, and when the charts will ring with their songs, everyone will remember and pay respect to the first virtual star.
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