¿?sick beats?¿ June 2021 Edition

Designed by: Lay Kai En, Ashley (21-O1)

Memes. Be it through GIFs, Vines, Reddit, pictures or songs, they’re short, chuckle-worthy and go viral with the tap of a finger. Surprisingly, full-length songs have also been turned into memes! More than any other generation, memes appeal the most to generation Z teenagers, who consume music at a staggering rate every day. But if you’re a little older, or have never really grasped the wondrous concept of “meme songs”, well, fret not! Here’s the Sick Beats team, bringing you the ultimate crash course - ‘Meme Songs for Dummies’. 

Venture with us into two different eras: The Classics (songs originating from the late 90s to early 2000s), and The Modern (2010s to 2020s). 

First up, the Classics. These songs are from an era that most teenagers may not know very well, but the songs themselves will no doubt be familiar to us as memes! 

All Star

‘Somebody once told me the world was gonna roll me, I ain’t the sharpest tool in the shed’. 

Here’s a song whose lyrics we all KNOW by heart: “All Star”. Can you believe that this smash-hit was released in 1999? “All Star” was Smash Mouth’s second single off their second full length album - “Astro Lounge”. The song became one of the group’s most successful hits, having peaked at number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 list in August that year. In 2001, when the animated film “Shrek” was released, it featured the all-time hit song during its opening sequence. The movie itself was pretty comedic, but coupled with the crude nature of “All Star”... you can imagine what a perfect match made in heaven it was. Consider this opportunity seized by the meme enthusiasts.

“All Star” not only became a global music sensation, but a meme that will live forever. Apart from its most iconic feature in Shrek’s opening, social media stars have also proliferated its fame. It now dwells in the recesses of TikTok and meme compilations on YouTube.

Barbie Girl

The annoyingly catchy tunes of “Barbie Girl” produced a shocking 24 years ago had once been voted the ‘worst song of the 1990s’ by the Rolling Stone magazine’s Readers Poll in 2011. Although the song may be irksome to some, others are hit with a tinge of odd nostalgia as they recall their younger days, chanting the chorus over and over again like a mantra. 

"Barbie Girl" is a song by the Danish-Norwegian dance-pop group Aqua. With its upbeat, fun rhythm that causes people to instinctively break into a dance, it has gained worldwide recognition to this day. From millennials to Gen Zs to Generation Alpha, this song is familiar and close to the heart. 

No doubt, this is the children’s anthem. Sadly, the lyrics are extremely problematic due to its sexist remarks made about women. The songwriters crudely objectified women intentionally, reducing girls to only their sexual capacity. Merely reflecting on the lyrics would cause one to grow uncomfortable at the blatant sexualisation of women which has ironically been labelled as a kid’s classic. 

With your newfound knowledge of how weirdly raunchy and problematic “Barbie Girl’ is, you should probably think twice before singing along to the tune. 

Rickroll 

The mere mention of the word “rickroll”, generates an oddly specific image to pop up in our heads: Rick Astley, awkwardly dancing to his song, “Never Gonna Give You Up”. Many unfortunate souls have fallen prey to the prank of clicking on an unsuspecting YouTube link, only for it to take them to Astley’s music video. However, this phenomenon did not come out of nowhere. In fact, it had a pretty interesting and well-documented rise. Here’s how it all boiled down.

In March 2007, a YouTube user began the trend of “rickrolling”. They posted links which they claimed were the trailer to the fourth installment of the popular game Grand Theft Auto, but were actually all links to the music video for “Never Gonna Give You Up”. This user also captioned posts on 4chan about this prank labelled “RickRoll’d”, eventually leading to the grand birth of “rickrolling”. 

“Rickrolling” spread like wildfire. Originally, it began at a small scale: people called into radio stations only to “rickroll” the DJs. However, pretty soon, “rickrolling” started to happen at a MUCH larger scale. From being used to protest the Church of Scientology for its censorship practices, to being sung at a Thanksgiving Day Parade. In recent times, the tune has even been used to prank an entire stadium of soccer enthusiasts, showing how ubiquitous the song has become in our modern day culture. 

As a trend, “rickrolling” is still going strong. On TikTok, students have been taking this opportunity to “rickroll” their teachers on Zoom during the quarantine period. Even Rick himself has fully embraced the fame that the song has brought him, releasing various remasters and remixes throughout the years. One of those remixes went viral this year on TikTok. So, it seems that “rickrolling” is here to stay. The next time you click on a YouTube link, don’t be surprised if it shows a young red-headed British singer, crooning the iconic hook, awkwardly shuffling around as 80s synths blast in the background. 

Take on Me 

Released by Norwegian dance-pop group A-ha in 1984, “Take on Me” originally didn’t gain as much traction as it currently does. The song took a painstaking two versions and three releases for it to finally chart at number two on the UK Singles Chart in 1985. Its commercial success was aided by its rather innovative music video that combined pencil-and-paper stop motion as well as rotoscoping.  As of 2021, its music video has 1.2 billion views. (That’s about a seventh of the world’s population, mind you.) While the song itself did somewhat play a part in its rise to fame, “Take on Me”’s success is more frequently attributed to its meme. 

The song’s ‘meme-able’ quality comes from the chorus which is notoriously difficult to sing. At the end of the chorus, the lead singer Morten Harket sings the lyrics, “Take on me/take me on/I’ll be gone” in increasingly higher notes, even hitting his falsetto range towards the end. At the end of the chorus, he sings, “In a day or two”, hitting the highest note of the song (an E5!) on the word “two”. Thanks to its infamous difficulty, many have taken it up as a challenge in an attempt to sing it. One of the most viewed covers of this song is by the notable YouTube voice actor ProZD. His video entitled, “Nailing every note in Take on Me”, is a bona-fide example of the meme as it shows him struggling and ultimately failing to hit the high notes in “Take on Me”. Many others have tried to challenge themselves as well, spreading the meme everywhere across the Internet. Perhaps you should try the challenge one day, and see whether you can hit that E5 as well! 

Next, here are the newer meme songs that were produced in the generation us teenagers grew up in!

Astronomia

Covid 19 gave birth to one of the most popular memes in 2020, more widely known as the dancing coffin meme. So how exactly did this heavy EDM song, posted a literal decade ago, transform into such a ubiquitous meme? It all started on TikTok (no surprise there), when a user uploaded a video of 6 pallbearers with “Astronomia” as its backing track. Initially, the meme represented the riskiness of venturing out unnecessarily during the pandemic, but now this meme has morphed and can be used in a variety of situations, such as getting into trouble with the law, parents, school, or just any worrying situation.

Around a year has passed and this meme is still alive and kicking. Different versions of this song have also reached Shazam’s top 200 global chart, showing the large number of people that have been newly introduced to this ear candy.

Gangnam Style

This song belongs to the current P Nation boss, Park Jae Sung, better known as PSY and was co-produced by current YG entertainment CEO Yang Hyun Suk. With its release, “Gangnam Style” and its music video took the world by storm, topping music charts, with the iconic pony dance move gaining mad traction, effectively changing the global pop culture landscape. Shortly after, many individuals and even organisations have made parodies of the song.

Until now, it is impossible not to remember such a masterpiece as this, or at the bare minimum - recall the ICONIC pony dance move. “Gangnam Style” was the top meme of 2012, and years later, many “Gangnam Style” stickers were still being created and circulated on social media.

Despite being your typical K-pop song, one should never underestimate the sheer might of this simple song. “Gangnam Style” has created new cultures, such as dancing in mobs, even being used as a symbol for global unity and getting audiences to recognise the Korean Wave.

Kahoot Lobby Music  

This piece was released as an official song under the Kahoot! Lobby Music Original Soundtrack in 2013. Play the first second of the song and observe the immediate reactions of students who have grown all too familiar to the tune. Teachers have used Kahoot! countless times, blasting the track while waiting for all students to enter the Kahoot! room, where they unconsciously inculcate their students with the habit of expecting this track to be played whenever they use the site. The song was uploaded on Spotify and currently has a jaw-dropping 4 million streams. 

Even though the song may seem like just another cute track that Gen Z’s are oddly enthralled with, it is significant to many people in contributing to their school experiences as the track brings back innocent, nostalgic memories (such as getting one question wrong and falling to the last place) that they wish they could still relive. 

PPAP

This was a short single written by Japanese comedian Daimaou Kosaka, better recognised by his mustard yellow leopard print coat. The music video was released in 2016, and it was hailed as the new “Gangnam Style” by various sources of online media news outlets shortly after it went viral. Even Justin Bieber himself shared the video on Twitter, captioning it as follows, “favourite video on the Internet”. Soon came a wave of fans that parodied the song, consequently generating fresh, new memes.

Cut to 2020, and in light of the severity of the Covid-19 pandemic, the originator himself remixed the song and gave a whole new meaning to the letters “PPAP”, which now meant Pray for People And Peace. Evidently, the song is still quite popular especially amongst Gen Zs, as seen in the numerous stickers of “PPAP” that spread throughout the Internet. If you are unfamiliar with any of these stickers, or are running out of stickers to send to your friends, try adding these to your collection.

Shooting Stars 

This EDM song by Australian duo Bag Raiders was originally released in 2008, and is interestingly one of the few songs to feature the instrument Stylophone. Though the song peaked in Australia in 2013, it wasn’t a meme until 2017. The year before, “Shooting Stars” first gained traction when it was used in an animated tribute to Harambe the Gorilla. The next year, the song became a meme on Reddit, featuring people falling in space-like, surreal backgrounds.  

The song further surged in popularity when the singer Katy Perry used it in the music video for her diss track against Taylor Swift, titled “Swish Swish”. Though the meme accompanying this song may not be as big or impactful as some of the others featured on this list, the fame it gained is nothing to sneeze at. As of 2020, “Shooting Stars” has 128 million views on YouTube, showing the power of its accompanying meme.