Wing (South Park) - Production

Production

The character of Wing was based on Wing Han Tsang (曾詠韓), a New Zealand singer of Hong Kong origin. All of the songs the character performs in the episode (including the ABBA songs "Dancing Queen" and "Fernando", and the song "Sing") are actually the real-life Wing singing, taken from previous audio recordings. On the DVD commentary for this episode, series creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone explain that they decided to do a show about Wing after a friend led them to her site. They thought that the whole idea of this singer was either a "super sweet joke" or a "super sweet not joke", but continued to listen to more of her music, especially whenever they were frustrated. Parker and Stone contacted Wing on using her songs, and she had to approve her cartoon likeness before allowing her music to be used. Parker also says he received a letter of thanks from her for the sales boost she enjoyed as a result of the episode.

At the pageant, Token performs the song "You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine" by Lou Rawls. His singing voice was not provided by the usual dubbing actor Adrien Beard, but is in fact the original Lou Rawls recording of the song. The reason that Beard doesn't provide the singing is that Trey and Matt were dissatisfied with his singing in Here Comes the Neighborhood. However, Lou Rawls' voice is sped up to the same pitch that all of the actor's voices are shifted to sound childlike. In this case, it would be 3 semitones (from the song's original key of D Major to F Major).