Seattle Police Department releases lip-sync video
Jul 25, 2018, 12:11 AM | Updated: Jul 26, 2018, 7:52 pm
Seattle police’s highly-anticipated response to Norfolk, Virginia’s lip-sync challenge has finally arrived.
View the video here.
The Seattle Police Department released its lip-sync performance in the early morning hours of Wednesday, July 25. Their rendition of “Downtown” by Seattle hip-hop artists Macklemore and Ryan Lewis features performances by local cops and figures such as Mariner’s Félix Hernández and Seahawks’ Germain Ifedi and Walter Jones. Basketball hall-of-famer and Seattle SuperSonic Lenny Wilkins is also in the video.
Seattle is the latest in a string of lip-sync challenges between police departments across the nation. SPD has just made it international as they have just passed the challenge to the Metropolitan Police Service in London.
RELATED: Other Washington police film lip sync videos
SPD’s performance comes on the heels of the Norfolk Police Department’s performance that became an online sensation, going viral and viewed by millions. The Virginia police department’s performance of “Uptown Funk” by Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars set a high bar. Norfolk police challenged Seattle to make its own video on July 9.
If initial response is any indication, Seattle’s video will likely go viral, too. In just 30 minutes, it was already viewed 11,000 times and had more than 1,400 shares on Facebook. Within 12 hours, it was viewed more than 1.2 million times, and had more than 61,000 shares.
SPD did tease Seattle with its performance, tweeting a fake video hours before the real performance debuted.
#DowntownLipSync 12:01 PST https://t.co/gX6wqyrDLI pic.twitter.com/jDRpgmjHHj
— Seattle Police Dept. (@SeattlePD) July 25, 2018
Macklemore’s “Downtown” was among a range of suggestions that Seattleites called out for SPD. Other recommendations included Sir Mix A Lot’s “Posse on Broadway” and “Singing in the Rain.”
The original music video for the song about Seattle locales was filmed in Spokane. So SPD’s version brings the song back home. The department reached out to the Belltown neighborhood to help with parades scenes for the video.
