Formulas for Success: The Lonely Island

See what I said about not always being serious? :)

Disclaimer: The videos in this post may be explicit.

The Lonely Island is a comedy troupe comprised of Andy Samberg (SNL) and his two buddies, Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone. The group is best known for its raunchy and/or ridiculous topics, lyrics, and music videos, and has been featured several times on SNL, thanks to Samberg's connection.

On the Success Meter, The Lonely Island sits somewhere near a 7. The group is definitely nationally recognized, but not in a "I'm going to sit my kids down and watch this" kind of way. The group reaches out to primarily high school and college crowds, but is incredibly popular with those age groups.

Here's a few things that I think add to the success equation for Lonely Island:

1. Catchy / Cover-able Music
The tune you hear in an LI song might be something you'd hear on a Top Forty radio station, but the lyrics usually aren't. But it's the catchiness of those tunes that makes the stuff so popular for the demographic LI reaches out to.

The lyrics and concepts of the songs are generally so outrageous, that it's hard not to be amused by the ideas.

Good hooks and tunes make their music catchy enough to be cover-able (again, by the right demographic):


2. Collaboration
LI collaborates with everyone. Everyone who is an artist that's been on the Top Forty, anyway. LI has collaborated with a wide range of artists, from T-Pain to Michael Bolton, and most notably and often, Justin Timberlake. To top it off, the group is usually able to convince the artists to do ridiculous things they may not otherwise try.

Like convincing Adam Levine to run down a busy street wearing a cape and an anti-aliens tin foil hat, carrying a big "YOLO" sign:


Or convincing Michael Bolton to pretend to be a "major cinephile" and dress like Captain Jack Sparrow:


3. Viral Videos
I think the videos are what make LI's songs what they really are, and apparently others agree. The above YOLO vid was published Jan. 26. It is currently 1:09 pm (CST), and the vid has received over 3.5 million views... I would say that's viral.

Samberg's connections with SNL boost views greatly, and their videos saturate social media networks, which are chock full of high school and college students.

4. Sampling
We've already covered that LI's tunes are catchy, and here's why:

The majority of LI's most popular songs have been sampled from other popular songs. They've even sampled from some of their own songs, which were sampled from somewhere else. LI doesn't deny this, and has given credit to artists they sample from on their YouTube postings. This boosts popularity for some of the less popular artists, too.

You can see a complete list of LI's sampled stuff here.

So, there you have it: My opinions of why The Lonely Island has received the success it has over the past few years.

Let me know if you think I'm right, or if you've got an opinion of your own!