Here's a 2005 video of Rob Paulsen, who was the voice of Yakko Warner on the amazing Animaniacs cartoon, performing "Yakko's World," a fiendishly difficult and delightful Gilbert & Sullivanesque recital of the nations of the world set to the tune of the "Mexican Hat Dance." The song is from a 1993 episode of the show, and Paulsen's got near-perfect recall of it 12 years later.

Rob Paulsen- Nations of the World (via Reddit)

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goldenearth

Voice character actor MEL BLANC first performed this on his own comedy radio show back in the late 1940s. It’s available as a free download on Archive.Org (only a very few Mel Blanc Shows were recorded) – Blanc’s version is more twisted and deranged, but Paulsen indeed does a great job too!
- http://twitter.com/mmmPi mmmPi
  
  The song was written by Randy Rogel for Animaniacs- so you must be talking about a different song.
  - Joshua Ochs
    
    Especially seeing as Yakko’s rendition is very much a product of its time. “Germany now-in-one-piece”, as well as many others.
  - goldenearth
    
    No, same song – except perhaps with a few modifications due to country name changes – for instance, Persia instead of Iran. I’ll track down the specific link and post it here ASAP
    - http://devojane.blogspot.com devophill
      
      [citation needed]
    - sourbob
      
      Here’s Randy Rogel discussing writing the song:
      
      http://www.bigdamngeeks.com/?p=1405
http://profiles.google.com/keithdtyler Keith Tyler

His name is Robert Paulsen.
His name is Robert Paulsen.
jlargentaye

Was expecting some reference to Fight Club, found much better.

It’s fun to see the difference with his normal voice, and amazing how effortless he makes the song seem!
- jhoosier
  
  I wish I could control my voice like that.
http://twitter.com/thDigitalReader Nate the great

That was awesome. But do you know what’s even better? Rob posted a video last year of him singing this song with the KY Symphony Orchestra.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgZcgTYCDrc&feature=related

His Youtube account name is Yakko! LOL!
Erik

He just sang it verbatim on the latest Nerdist Podcast with Chris Hardwick (where he was joined by Maurice “The Brain” LaMarche as well) — it was awesome!
- http://www.facebook.com/mvogts Mike Vogts
  
  That was easily one of the best podcasts I’ve ever listened to. It could have gone on for 8 hours and not gotten boring.
  - Bonobo
    
    I just downloaded every episode of Rob’s podcast since he mentioned it on his Nerdist appearance.
CHilke

“…and now there’s sooouth!”
http://www.mrericsir.com MrEricSir

Here’s the original cartoon for those of us who don’t remember it.
Keith Achorn

This was my favorite skit from Animaniacs, but I never expect that it was done all in one go. It’s even more impressive that he can still do it so many years later (I’ll give him a pass on the dozen or so countries that have been updated since then).
MelSkunk

When I was young and nerdy (12 when this came out) I remember trying to memorize the song. It got really tricky with some of the harder to pronounce places, and I didn’t think to use a VCR so I just tried to write them down as the show happened. Needless to say I did rather poorly for many of the middle regions in the song.
Jack Majewski

I’m not surprised he has perfect recall 12 years later. If I could do this, I would be signing it basically every time I was alone.
Mister44

The Animaniacs were awesome. WHY don’t they re-run that anywhere? My mom one time found a framed picture signed by all three voice actors at a garage sale.
http://newnumber6.livejournal.com Peter

I actually can recite the song, or at least the countries (the exact placements of the ‘ands’ and similar connective words still elude me, but I can do the countries in the right order, and I’m not really a singer).

I started trying to memorize it when I was a kid and first saw it, got as far as the first verse, then about a year ago I rediscovered it on youtube and made it a mission to complete the job.
jackie31337

I never imagined that this is what Yakko’s voice looks like. It’s definitely interesting to hear the difference between his normal speaking voice and his character voice.
Val Lindsay

I learned this because A) It’s a great voice exercise, B) Geography! and C) It just generates smiles at open mics. :)
Arys

I have this (and a bunch of other Animaniacs songs) on my iPod. When I have my ‘Pod on shuffle it always brings a smile :-)
conleysdoodles

I actually just saw him do this at Emerald City Comic Con last weekend! It was amazing.
http://aqfl.net Ant

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kT4UrsvzWs for another one, but from 2007.

Voice of Yakko Warner performs "Yakko's World"

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