Bob Marley & The Wailers – Three Little Birds
2020 · Directed by Morgan Powell
1.6M Likes
Best comments
1.“Producer: 'You guys almost done drawing for the Three Little Birds video?' Artists who've been drawing Three Little Pigs for 18 months: 'Birds?'”
More comments
- 2.“Who knew a piggy and a wolf smoking a joint would be so wholesome?”
- 3.“Remember: there is no 'I' in weed, but there is 'we'... so share that shit. – Karl Marx, probably”
The story
Bob Marley wrote Three Little Birds for Exodus in 1977, and the birds may have been real. A longtime friend remembered canaries sitting on a windowsill at his place on Hope Road. It wasn't a smash out of the gate, either. It came out as a single in 1980, peaked at number 17 in the UK, then spent the next forty years becoming the song people reach for when everything is on fire.
This animated video arrived in April 2020, timed to what would have been Marley's 75th birthday and, not by accident, to 4/20. His daughter Cedella asked London's Seed Animation to make it. Director Morgan Powell took the old Big Bad Wolf fairy tale and turned it inside out: over a single day, three little birds sing to Little Pig and Big Bad Wolf, and the two sworn enemies end up friends. Powell said the question was simple – what happens when you push through fear? A certain substance may help the peace talks along. It was 4/20, after all.
The look is pure children's storybook, 2D animation built in Photoshop, Adobe Animate and After Effects. Cedella said she hoped her father's song could bring people hope again, and spring 2020, with half the planet locked indoors, needed every ounce. A wolf and a pig having lunch instead of each other. Best news anybody got that month.
