Cue Semisonic: It’s ‘Closing Time’ at Target

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Target employees in Victoria, B.C., said goodbye to the American chain — and the jobs they loved — with an acoustic cover of Semisonic’s “Closing Time.”

Using only a guitar, a shopping basket (as a drum) and a hanger bar (as a microphone) — employee Evan Holbein called their tribute “a little musical send off, with what we had available” — the musical employees were pulled through the empty aisles on a merchandise trolley as they sang their “final goodbye” to the store.

Their tribute to Target, which was posted to Facebook on Sunday, went viral.

Holbein, who played the shopping basket in the video, wrote that they initially wanted to play “Closing Time” over the P.A. system, but his coworker Kyle took the idea one step further and learned to play the song on guitar instead.

“In one take, and no practice, we took to our make shift instruments. I sat and played a shopping basket with two plastic hangers, Liam M grabbed a hanger bar to use as a faux-mic, and Eric mounted up his camera and masterfully filmed and edited this bad boy,” Holbein wrote.

“With Brady and Liam K (Skipper) pulling us along, we poured our heart into our final goodbye through song, to a job we loved, and a building that contains so many great memories!”

It should be noted that “Closing Time” was written by Semisonic songwriter Dan Wilson “in anticipation of fatherhood” — not simply as an ode to bartenders at the end of the night.

“My wife and I were expecting our first kid very soon after I wrote that song. I had birth on the brain, I was struck by what a funny pun it was to be bounced from the womb,” Wilson told American Songwriter in 2010.