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Kanye West Goes to The Puppet Olympics in "Champion" Video

August 12, 2008 11:32 AM ET

Kanye Wes has caught Olympic fever with his new video for Graduation's "Champion." The clip features an Avenue Q version of West getting approval from some judges to run in the 100 meter sprint at the "Unified Games." Puppet 'Ye takes to the track wearing those patented white Venetian blinds sunglasses and just when the gun is about to go off, we jump back into his past to draw some lyrical connections about overcoming hardships. If this is anything like the "Flashing Lights" video series, future "Champion" videos can feature Puppet Kanye partaking in other Olympic events like 10m Air Rifle, Javelin Throw and Water Polo.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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