In the latest celebrity contribution to the “Tiger King” craze, the punk band the Offspring has shared its cover of “Here Kitty Kitty,” Joe Exotic’s Carole Baskin diss track that was featured in Netflix’s documentary series.
Though the series led viewers to believe Exotic had a country music career on the side, “Here Kitty Kitty” — along with most of the songs posted online under Exotic’s name —was actually recorded by the Clinton Johnson Band. However, Exotic produced an outrageous music video that was all his own, making a spectacle of a Baskin lookalike feeding her husband’s “meat” to tigers.
The Offspring’s version also comes with a music video, but it’s much more tame. Lead singer Dexter Holland and guitarist Kevin “Noodles” Wasserman appear in masks, each playing guitar and adding vocals to the track. Meanwhile, drummer Pete Parada is dressed in a full-blown tiger suit.
The band is soon joined by a couple of dancing cats, and B-roll of the “tiger” skateboarding around Newport Beach is spliced throughout. It’s a surprisingly stripped-down set up for the Offspring, and the band plays it truer to the twangy country sound of the original than its own punk roots. Published on April 21, the video already has over a million views.
“Like many of you, we are going a little stir-crazy these days, and we wanted to do something fun to put a smile on our faces, and hopefully on some of yours too,” the band wrote in the video’s description.
Besides the obvious hype surrounding the show, it seems that the idea to cover “Here Kitty Kitty” was also inspired by the members’ spouses.
“The Offspring wives were group-texting recently, and while they all agreed that they truly love their husbands, there are times when they’ve absolutely felt like feeding us to the tigers,” the description says.
Watch the Offspring’s cover of “Here Kitty Kitty,” and compare it to the original, below.