J.J. Abrams really likes "Sabotage" by the Beastie Boys.  He must because he's used it in two of the Star Trek movies that he's directed.  My wife and I were watching Star Trek: Beyond on Hulu the other night, and Captain Kirk and his crew used the song to thwart an alien attack on a Federation starbase.  That took me back to 2009's Star Trek where "Sabotage" can be heard blaring out of the radio in a car that an adolescent J.T. Kirk was driving.

"Sabotage" has been featured in movies, TV shows, and video games.  It's been performed live by bands like Phish, Korn, and Slipknot--the latter two playing it live together on stage in London.

Which is pretty amazing for a song that was only a moderate commercial success.  It was released in 1994 as the first single from Beastie Boys' fourth studio album called III Communication.  It never even charted on the Billboard Hot 100, though it did climb to number 18 on Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks.

Over the years the song has widely become viewed as one of the best rock songs ever recorded.  In 2004 Rolling Stone magazine ranked it #480 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs Of All Time.  VHI ranked "Sabotage" as the #19 song on their chart of the 100 Greatest Songs Of The 90's.

The continuing popularity of "Sabotage" is no doubt attributable in large part to its legendary video that was directed by a young Spike Jonze, who has gone on to be an Academy Award-winning screenwriter, producer, director, and actor.

The video is a take-off on over-the-top 70's crime shows like Starsky and Hutch, Baretta, and S.W.A.T.  The whole video is depicted as the opening sequence of a TV series called "Sabotage" with each member of the band starring as a different character in the show.

"Sabotage" is back in the limelight again, this time in a viral video produced by famous mashup creator Mylo the Cat (Adam Schleichkorn).  Mylo has edited scenes from the 1985 Sesame Street movie Follow That Bird to recreate the Beastie Boys video scene-for-scene.  The result is an incredible romp through the past in an homage to both Sesame Street and the Beastie Boys.

 

 

 

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