Vampire Weekend, The Black Keys Have A “Sell Out Off” On ‘Colbert’ For His GRAMMY Vote

You might be aware that Stephen Colbert won a GRAMMY last year for his Christmas album, A Colbert Christmas – The Greatest Gift Of All. What you might not have known, and what Stephen made us all aware of on last night’s show, is that Grammy winners are the voters that determine who wins Grammys.

Of course, as he is wont to do, Stephen decided to fill out his ballot live on the show. He skipped quickly past almost every category (stopping briefly to declare Justin Bieber ‘Best New Artist’) and got to the one he cared about the most, Best Alternative Album.

In his mind there were only two contenders here — Vampire Weekend and The Black Keys. So he brought out the world’s foremost experts on those respective bands: Ezra Koenig from the former, Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney from the latter.

“It used to be easy,” Stephen said, “to determine the best album of the year.” It was the one that sold the most copies. But unfortunately nobody buys music anymore. So how do you determine it?

Stephen made the challenge: “Who got their songs in the most commercials?” Ezra, acting chops fully on display, cocked his head and asked if Stephen was challenging them to a sell-out-off. And indeed he was.

The Black Keys opened with a Zales commercial:

Ezra and Vampire Weekend quickly countered with their Christmas-themed Honda commercial, featuring the aptly-named Holiday:

“Was that song written for Honda,” Stephen wondered? “No Stephen,” Ezra replied. “we actually wrote it for Tommy Hilfiger.“

Dan and Patrick are unphased. Can Ezra possibly beat… Victoria’s Secret?

Wow! Stephen feels like Ezra has to concede, but he will not… because here comes Hewlett-Packard:

Dan shouts into split-screen and fires back with their Sony Ericsson commercial (pretend I found this one on YouTube.)

Stephen realizes it won’t be settled this way. So of course, the weapons come out. Watch the rest for yourself: