Next year’s interns at Microsoft have a high bar to beat because 2019’s class made a whole damn musical over the summer.
About 150 interns and full-time employees gave up their weekends, mornings, and nights to help make “Microsoft the Musical,” according to the video’s Youtube page. And it’s exactly the kind of campy romp you’d expect, with plenty of singing and dancing by staff wearing outfits themed to the company’s logo colours.
It begins with an ode to co-founder Bill Gates and the somewhat bizarre tagline that he’s “more of an idea” than a person. I guess the message is we all have a little Bill Gates inside of us? Then to the chorus of “it’s all happening here,” the musical goes through a surprisingly candid history of Microsoft’s many ventures and products.
There’s a quick jab at the company missing a beat with Vista and my personal favourite zinger, “all around the world our products are well known, except for when we tried to make a phone!” And they work in a few throwbacks, like former CEO Steve Ballmer’s “developers, developers, developers” chant and a reference to the gone-but-not-forgotten Office Assistant, Clippy.
It gets a bit cringey at parts, particularly when they start referencing Xbox and “levelling up.” But it’s such an earnest effort that obviously took a lot of time to coordinate (eight weeks in total, according to their page) that I don’t feel entirely right dunking on it. It’s some refreshingly wholesome content on the otherwise burning trash fire that is my news feed. And it totally doesn’t remind me of other instances when Microsoft has appeared in headlines. Not at all.
Though, I will say, based on how much bank Microsoft’s interns are purportedly pulling in, hell I might be chipper enough to make a musical too.