YouTube awards 'Chocolate Rain,' other top videos

NEW YORK -- And the winner for best music video: "Chocolate Rain."

Tay Zonday morphed from an unknown musician to an Internet superstar who got booked on national TV shows after his song "Chocolate Rain" — an amateur clip of his baritone crooning — went viral last year. Now he's among the 12 winners of the second annual YouTube Video Awards, recognizing the top user-created videos of 2007.

YouTube users voted on six nominees for each category: music, sports, comedy, instructional, short film, inspirational, commentary, creative, politics, series, eyewitness and "adorable."

"It's the new Emmys," Zonday, 25, said of the video-sharing site's awards in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "It's the next Oscars. The next People's Choice Awards. It'll be interesting to see what happens five years, 10 years (from now)."

His competition included comely singer-songwriter Mia Rose and "the vegetable orchestra," featuring a jam session with a carrot flute and squash drum.

Neil Cicierega's video featuring "Harry Potter" hand puppets (and Professor Dumbledore without any clothes on) won for best comedy video. Guillaume Reymond's "Human Tetris" won most creative video.

Chris Crocker, who shot to stardom in his video freak-out over Britney Spears' public meltdown, was beat in the commentary category by a clip from Michael Buckley of the popular online show "What the Buck?" slamming fellow YouTube celebrity Lonelygirl15.

The Obama Girl, aka Amber Lee Ettinger, whose "I Got A Crush On Obama" clip has been seen more than 7 million times, didn't wind up winning in the politics category. That honor went to the serious-minded "Stop the Clash of Civilizations" video by the global organization avaaz.org.

"The (political) video that actually won in an election year wasn't one that had anything to do with the election itself," said YouTube spokesman Aaron Ferstman. "(It's a) video that deals with ... serious issues like discrimination, and that video's done in kind of a neat way that speaks to young people."