A new YouTube trend seems to have us well and truly in its grip and the person heading this exciting new craze? It’s none other than Britney Spears.

That’s maybe not strictly true; the videos are produced by a guy called Mario Wienerroither who produces musicless music videos. Basically, he takes all of the backing track out of the music video, leaving the artist’s vocals and any hilarious sound effects that he thinks may be relevant.

Mario has been making these videos for a while now but the one that seems to have really caught the attention of the internet is his version of Britney Spears’ Oops!... I did it again video.

With the music stripped out of it, the video becomes a hilarious combination of Spears’ squeaky vocals which are mostly drowned out by the equally shrill squeaking of her famous red PVC cat suit.

This is the next level of parody, using the artist’s own mannerisms and adding in a few sounds effects that would be present if the backing track wasn’t there with maximum effect.

As with any good idea, many other people have copied the concept and have now created videos of their own. A quick YouTube search brings up countless videos who follow the same format, one of the most popular being Psy’s Gangnam Style which without the music becomes a crazy display of how many sound effects can be fit into four minutes.

Another favourite is a musicless version of Pharrell’s Happy which, if you’re unfamiliar with the video, shows various different people dancing and singing along with the backing track. In the musicless version, it is speculated how each of the individuals might sound if they were actually singing, with rather amusing consequences.

Links for the YouTube videos mentioned can be found below:

http://youtu.be/cm0evQaHlE4
http://youtu.be/f6ZSZbNfSpk
http://youtu.be/FPWgRbBTBwA