The Midnight Beast, sometimes abbreviated as TMB, is a British comedy/parody music group from London. They are most famous for their YouTube cover-parody of the 2009 single "TiK ToK" by American pop artist Ke$ha. The group currently has three members: Stefan Abingdon, Dru Wakely and Ashley Horne.
Reception
The Midnight Beast had over 422,000 subscribers and 87,022,136 views combined on their YouTube channel (as of May 2021), as well as 405,650 Facebook fans as of March 2014. The group's songs often appear on iTunes music charts with their recent album reaching Number Two in the iTunes Music charts, and their accompanying music videos routinely reaching over 1 million views on YouTube. On Christmas Day 2009, the "TiK ToK" parody was featured on the front page of MTV.com. The group has also made videos in collaboration with BBC Comedy, MTV Rocks, Sky Arts, Vimeo Originals and Universal Pictures.
The group has garnered praise from many of the artists that they have parodied as both Ke$ha and Jay Sean have tweeted positive reactions to the parody of their respective songs, TiK ToK and Down, with Ke$ha stating "holy. shit. this is better than my version", and Jay Sean posting "Hahaha brilliant. Someone should mix this with 'pants on the ground.'"
The Midnight Beast has also attracted minor controversy with its music. In an online post from February 2011, Metro, a British newspaper, raised issue with the lyrics of "Use Ya Head", a sexual education-themed skit made for the Marie Stopes International charities Have A Larc organisation, which promotes safe sex. The paper cited the lines "One up the bum and it’s no harm done" and "One up the bum and you won’t be a mum'" stating that it appeared that the group was suggesting anal sex as a birth control method. It also quoted unnamed critics who mentioned that the video failed to point out that anal sex could still lead to the transmission of STDs.
Following the finale of season two of their series, the band released their second album Shtick Heads in June 2014. The album peaked at number 74 on the UK Albums Top 100 chart.
In 2018, the band released a new 'Claws' logo, that would serve as the artwork for their third album, "The Album Nobody Asked For." which was released on 24 August 2018, and the artwork for the album's five singles.