I’m excited to share this new parody music video with the world. It’s called “If I Didn’t Load Test” and it is dedicated to all of the performance engineers and those who run load tests on a regular basis.
The Backstory
I have made over a dozen music parodies so far, but most of them were based on older pop / rock songs from the 70’s and 80’s. Someone requested that I do something new, like a modern country song. I found this song and thought it would be a great addition to the parody playlist.
Note: you can see all of my other parodies at this link.
The end product you see represents about 10 months of work. It started with a concept in my head. I wrote the lyrics and then proceeded to work with Luke Taylor on the video concept. We had to start with the audio first.
The music production is done by a grammy award winning producer/engineer J.R. McNeely who does all of my background music. Find out more about J.R. at this link. He re-recoded this song from SCRATCH. He mixed the song as well. You can tell, it sounds radio ready, just like the original.
I sang the Jason parts and Nashville singer April Ky did the Carrie parts. April is an amazing singer and she really pulled this one off well. You can find out more about her at her website – https://www.aprilkry.com/
The video was recorded in a Nashville studio with the top of the line cinematic cameras. We used Skaggs Place Studios just outside of Nashville, owned by Grand Ole Opry legend Ricky Skaggs. His studio featured the ORIGINAL WSM microphone and an actual pew from the Ryman auditorium.
The girl in the video is NOT April Kry, but rather my own sister, Christie Kennedy. Christie is a board certified DNP Nurse Practitioner who I tricked into doing this with me. 😛
In this part of the video she’s giving all of us a mini course on bio-identical hormones and thyroid care. 😄
The sound engineer in the studio is an ACTUAL recording engineer – Sean Badum – who has worked with artists such as Carrie Underwood, Taylor Swift, and others.
The “bass player” is my friend Ron Foster, who is a security penetration tester at Saltworks Security.
The Song
This is a parody of the song “If I Didn’t Love You” by Jason Aldean and Carrie Underwood released in 2021.
From Wikipedia: “The song was nominated at 64th Annual Grammy Awards for Best Country Duo/Group Performance and was recognized with the Academy of Country Music Awards for Single of the Year. The related music video won two CMT Music Awards, including Video of the Year, making Underwood the most prized in the category. Commercially the song became the highest debut for a duet between a solo male and female artist on the Billboard Hot Country Songs, peaking at number two, reaching platinum RIAA certification.”
Below is the original YouTube video URL on which this parody music video is based:
https://youtu.be/px89HMy3M3o?feature=shared
Lyrics For The Parody Music Video
Our website is so strong
All the bottlenecks are gone
Even runs fast on my phone
Performance is crazy
Good scalability
Very happy SRE’s
Sub second latency
Is what we’re seeing lately
Pre-chorus
Yeah we
We could stop it all now
We could take on more risk
We could let it all go
Chorus
If I didn’t load test,
we’d be down by now
Crashing all of the servers
that are in the cloud
You know we’d all be unemployed
the company destroyed
Our customers would hate us too
If I didn’t load test
If I didn’t load test
Having low transaction times
Very good reviews online
Shopping carts are acting fine
Conversions are higher
Try to learn when we fail
(when we fail)
Like – Taylor Swift ticket sales
(ticket sales)
A CIO should be in jail
From that dumpster fire
Yeah we
We could stop it all now
We could take on more risk
We could let it all go
If I didn’t load test,
we’d be down by now
Crashing all of the servers
that are in the cloud
You know we’d all be unemployed
the company destroyed
Our customers would hate us too
If I didn’t load test
If I didn’t load test
Well, It isn’t hard to see just
how much the Devs need us
Even though they won’t admit
that they do
If I didn’t load test
If I didn’t load test
If I didn’t load test,
we’d be down by now
Crashing all of the servers
that are in the cloud
You know we’d all be unemployed
the company destroyed
Our customers would hate us too
If I didn’t load test
If I didn’t load test
If I didn’t load test
If I didn’t load test
Summary
I’m biased on this, but I think we nailed it. Maybe only software engineers will get the joke – but it’s a pretty good joke. I hope you enjoy the video and will share it with others.
I did this to set the bar high for making enterprise technology content for engineers that is entertaining, but educational and engaging. It’s dedicated to all of those people who have felt disenfranchised as a “non-functional tester” at companies that are just checking a box, and don’t recognize your value. You are a total rock star, and you should be proud of the value you bring to reduce risk and make software better. The lyrics read like a slide deck aimed at the executive level to let them know why load testing software is so important. Maybe if you send them the link to the video, they will watch it and read the lyrics, and finally get it.
For another cool parody music video, check out this one about Firewalls that speaks to the security space.