So what happens to the way we interpret music when they’ve reached popularity in such a viral fashion?įrom what I’ve observed, these “challenges” not only popularize the song that is used, but the song becomes tightly bound to the meme. But in consuming song-memes, they’re both being consumed and shared in a social context. Everyone interprets and attaches their own meaning to music when they listen to a song alone, and it can be an incredibly personal experience. When you’re feeling down, “Honey” can even make you feel like you’re being given a warm hug by Kehlani herself. Even if you can’t sing or play instruments, you can still feel power in listening to Rihanna, angst in listening to Green Day, say “I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling 22” despite not being 22. Music has always been a means for self-expression. He explained to the New York Times that he wanted to use it because, “It’s my favorite song and I wanted my friends and the internet to all hear it and enjoy it as well.” And when Shiggy, the social media influencer who created the In My Feelings challenge, explained his inspiration behind the dance, he recalled “immediately the beat when it came on like ‘trapmoneybenny’.like it came on nice and smooth and made me wanna move.” These memes are born out of a strong fanbase who want to share their love for the music that they feel connected to. Joseph Day, a former student at Colony High School in Ontario California, was the first to use “Black Beatles” in a Mannequin Challenge. The relationship between memes and music is really a result of the deep desire for fans to have a higher level of engagement with the music that they love. The commonalities of songs and memes are what enable viral media in the digital age, and apps created for the purpose of sharing short, user-generated content like Vine, TikTok and Musical.ly have enabled that culture of virality. It’s not like books or movies which by nature take an investment of time, effort, and money to share and consume. They’re short, relatable, incite an immediate reaction, and most of all, they are easy to share. Memes and music share a number of common characteristics that facilitate such virality. “Black Beatles” was not the first, and it certainly will not be the last to experience this effect. Recently, the Microwave Challenge has gained popularity, where fans rotate slowly as if they’re in a microwave to the tune of “SLOW DANCING IN THE DARK” by Joji. 1 and while Drake is no stranger to a number one record, the Shiggy-pioneered challenge was being done everywhere, with Will Smith even dancing after scaling the top of a bridge in Budapest. Drake’s “In My Feelings” spent twenty-nine weeks at No. In recent years, there’s been a stark increase in how music has inspired memes, and how those memes have led to songs skyrocketing in popularity. While the song itself had been slowly rising in popularity, there is no doubt that the Mannequin Challenge was responsible for cementing “Black Beatles”’s position as a number one song. Rae Sremmurd and Gucci Mane were rap stars in their own right with thriving fan-bases, but they only had their first number one single with “Black Beatles.” After a high school student used “Black Beatles” by Rae Sremmurd in their Mannequin Challenge video, it took off and became the soundtrack to the challenge. In 2015, songs like “Trap Queen” by Fetty Wap (which reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100), and “Panda” by Desiigner set the foundation for the mainstream consumption of trap music. It safe to say that it was a really odd period of time.Īnd each time we watch, we’d hear a familiar opener “Black Beatles in the City, be back immediately to confiscate the money.” followed by producer tags “EarDrummers.MikeWillMadeIt…” Somewhere down the line we’d find ourselves watching Kris Jenner, Blac Chyna, and Rob Kardashian pretending to be mid-birth for the sake of the Mannequin Challenge. We’d have videos featuring high school kids sitting in their cafeteria, gymnasts balancing on their hands (showing off core strength ninety percent of us will never have), NFL players in their locker rooms, Paul McCartney alone in front of a grand piano. And in 2016, everyone and their mothers were making Mannequin Challenge videos. The Mannequin Challenge was a viral video trend in which people pretended to be frozen mid-action, as though they were mannequins. With the internet, culture moves at an impossibly fast pace. And if it feels like it’s been decades since the Mannequin Challenge, then that must mean it’s been centuries since planking was a thing, and millenniums since the Soulja Boy dance. It’s hard to wrap your head around the fact that the Mannequin Challenge happened only three years ago: It feels like it’s been decades since we saw video after video of people pretending to be frozen in-action.
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