Yet another version of the oft-imitated Hotline Bling is here, and this one has more star power than ever. In a video made by W Magazine, Bryan Cranston, Kristen Wiig, Amy Schumer, Seth Rogen, Rooney Mara, and still more celebrities cover the massive Drake hit, doing their best impressions, dramatic readings, and parodies.
The final result is pretty fantastic. Cranston’s deep, distinguished voice reading lyrics like “you started wearing less and going out more” and “that can only mean one thing” is hilarious, not to mention Elizabeth Banks’ seemingly spoken word-influenced take. The video’s participants take the song in so many different directions — all of them great.
Really, the only room for improvement in the video would be the amount of dancing. It isn’t completely devoid of it, but there are nowhere near as many moves — nor as comical of ones — as there are in the official music video. As hard as it would be to top Drake, we’d like to see the effort. Nonetheless, the video ranks up there among the best Hotline Bling parodies.
With the rapper’s record label reportedly forgetting to submit the song for Grammy consideration, it should be a comfort to him that his song is big enough to warrant an all-star A-list cover. Even one of the actors in the video covering Hotline Bling would have been impressive, but the fact that they all wanted to get in on the action is even more so. Drake himself appreciated their effort, calling the video his “greatest [Instagram] moment of the year” on the social media site, as well as adding, “Bryan Cranston you are my father.” (If that doesn’t mean love, what does?)
Seeing Hotline Bling go viral and inspire numerous other videos has been just one of Drake’s highlights in 2015. He also claimed the title of being the most-streamed artist on Spotify, among other accomplishments.
