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Editor’s Note: This article is part of Know Your Meme’s annual Top Ten Review series looking back at some of the most memorable and popular memes, events and people that defined Internet culture in 2015 as we know it.
M
usic is an industry and a passion; in 2015’s new crop of music memes, both aspects were on display. Top-selling singles came in both hyper-produced video format, like ‘Taylor Swift’s":/memes/people/taylor-swift “Bad Blood” music video, which starred a veritable cadre of noteworthy celebs and broke a YouTube viewing record, but was quickly forgotten except by her fandom. Another storytelling video, Rihanna’s“Bitch Better Have My Money”, was almost equally popular, but neither inspired much in the way of viral manipulation.
Behind these massive commercial successses were many noteworthy feuds, like that between Swift and Nicki Minaj; that one seemed manufactured expressly for the Video Music Awards performance it inspired, but the catchphrase Minaj ignited during the award ceremony, “What’s Good Miley?” seemed more spontaneous and let to a commenting trend on Cyrus’ Instagram. In any case, it seemed like Minaj might be a little salty in 2015 after her music streaming service, Tidal, failed to take off in any meaningful way. And Snoop Dogg spent a million hours on Instagram, trying to take the perfect selfie so he could get the viral fame he thought he deserved (why would he need it?).
The online world seemed to react to this co-option of memes by MTV and the music industry in general by pointing their interests backwards. Making fun of, of all things, nu metal took off in a big way, with the 90s kids and their admirers pulling tons of humorous lyrics from every possible source and reframing them for the lols. And it might have been the fault of Arrested Development, but the opening bars of Simon and Garfunkle’s hit “The Sounds of Silence” started appearing on reaction videos everywhere. And looking even further back, a screaming marmot sang opera, and everyone was thrilled.
Here’s our look at the musical memes that made us laugh and listen in 2015.
Within 24 hours of its release, “Hello,” Adele’s hit single from her long-awaited album 25, had broken the YouTube viewing record set earlier in the year by Taylor Swift. The album, when released in November, would later outsell every other record this year. Adele’s popularity is partially explained by her bombastic singing voice, used simply but to great effect in the catchy, melancholy single. But the blue-eyed soul songstress is not just a voice – her character of giving no f***s about the wide world of social media, celebrity reporting, and other distractions, is certainly unique in this styled-and-curated Instagram pop landscape.
Parodies by media figures (Ellen Degeneres, James Corden, Billy Eichner) and individuals were immediately forthcoming, many of which spotlit the use of a non-smartphone in the immediately iconic video. However, Jimmy Fallon, organizing one of his “Pop stars collaborating with the Roots and playing toy instruments” mini-concerts, scored the biggest viral hit, with an enthusiastic video it was hard not to love.
It had become a common comment refrain on /mu/, the music discussion board of 4chan: “Jenny Death When?!” The phrase was a shorthand for a question Death Grips fans had been asking for almost a year before – bam! – Jenny Death was suddenly released as a leak on the same board on March 19th. Death Grips are not known for being a forthcoming group, but they are generous, often giving away their music for free and refusing other offers of commercialism.
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In the meantime, the format of the phrase “Jenny Death When” started mutating and appearing in discussions relating to any upcoming pop culture phenomenon for which there was no exact release date. An video from the /mu/-favorite music critic Anthony Fantano (in which he is wearing a close replica of the Three Wolf Moon shirt) may have done its part to enshrine the phrase in infamy with his added layer of both humor and aggression.
Racism was a hot topic on college campuses this year, not least in part to an incident at the University of Oklahoma where a fraternity sang a racist chant at a party, which was recorded and leaked to nationwide disgust. With controversial events like these, it’s not unheard of for people to reveal their own unpopular opinions; but later in the week, when the anchors of MSNBC’s Morning Joe asserted that rap music itself was to blame for white students saying the n-word in a racist context, many took offense at their jump in logic.
One of the more humorous responses took place on Twitter, with rapper Talib Kweli using his retweets as ammunition to shoot the commentators’ arguments out of the clouds. The hashtag, #RapAlbumsThatCausedSlavery, reached 44,000-tweets strong, and featured all sorts of titles and cover images altered to satirically back up the point, usually with more historical context than Mika Brzezinski could hope to learn in a lifetime.
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Obviously Nu Metal was not born in 2015 – historians actually trace its roots back twenty years, to that fateful age known as 1994. It’s also not accurate to say that the genre, which is a combination of low, grinding rock riffs and scat-style or rap lyrics, came back into an unqualified vogue. Rather, in an effect somehow related to ’90s Nostalgia, it was actually making fun of nu metal that became popular.
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At least four separate memes related to the lyrics of nu metal songs reached popularity independently: Wake Me Up Inside, in which the phrase was often paired with photos of WWE wrestler Dean Ambrose or pictures of a Skeleton; Crawling In My Skin, which parodied the second line of the chorus in Linkin Park’s“Crawling”; Let the Bodies Hit the Floor, which was usually videos of characters singing the song “Bodies” by Drowning Pool, but also featured a standout GIF of Nicolas Cage; and Cut My Life Into Pieces, which used word-replacement to parody the melodrama of the original lyrics by Papa Roach. Aside from these main instances, other references to the genre were scattered around shitposting forums everywhere. All in all, it might have been the biggest year for Nu Metal since 1999, but we don’t know if Korn are very happy about it.
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While Nu Metal might have reached ironic fandom, the true breakout genre of the year was a subculture of rap referred to as Trap Music. Known for its use of 808 kick drums, multi-layered synthesizers and generally dark hip-hop sound, the genre gained notoriety online with the song Turn Down For What, and was also present in hits such as Watch Me by Silento, tracks by Canadian artist Drake, and most prominently the Patterson, New Jersey native Fetty Wap who had perhaps the summer’s most infectious hit with his song Trap Queen.
Trap music made other stars as well, like O.T. Genasis, who scored a mainstream hit with “Coco” and viral attention on Vine and elsewhere on social media for explicit references to illicit drugs and humorous mondegreens.
Bruno Mars and Mark Ronson created this infectious boogie of a song and its fun, collaborative dance party of a music video with a little help from the ghost of Michael Jackson, but the parodies that resulted from this massive hit belonged to the Internet and the Internet alone. From the silly chorus (“Uptown Funk You Up!”) to the borderline-cheesy dance moves, the song was a ripe fruit for the parodic-plucking, and many took advantage, including, for better or worse, the world of YouTube Poop.
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This exploitable of a young girl standing in front of police officers at a protest to commemorate the one-year anniversary of Michael Brown’s Death is only musical because of her t-shirt, but the fan makes the band, if you know what we mean. Her name is Lexi, and she was 19 at the time the photo was taken, but she will live forever as an icon of defense of the indefensible.
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“Hello Darkness, My Old Friend” is the opening lyric from the 1964 soft rock song “The Sound of Silence” performed by the American folk rock duo Simon & Garfunkel. So why is it a meme in 2015? Some combination of the American sitcom Arrested Development, the Sad Brazilian Fan, and electronic dance music producer David Guetta combined to make it this throwback tune into the dankest of memes, and this year, the action crested, with the opening bars being added to everything from videos of the Gnome Child to reverse bungee sadness videos.
Simon and Garfunkle are probably thrilled to hear that their epic classic has found a new audience. Maybe. We’re not sure, actually.
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Vine Remix Memes
After adding the ability last year for users to easily upload edited videos straight from their phone’s camera roll (instead of the previously-mandated in-app recording), Vine sprung back from the world of dead or dying apps and became a central clearing house for short, repurposed clips in hilarious contexts. With people using simple apps to combine video clips and music, an entire new genre of short-lived, quickly distributed (and even more quickly old sauce) comedic films were born.
Some of the best examples this year came directly from music videos and performances, like Beyonce Always on Beat and it’s sub-meme Drake Always on Beat, which matched the superstars’ dance moves to music from across the spectrum. Or, sometimes the meme took the opposite tack, like the longer-lasting and immensely popular Little Einstein’s Theme, a song taken from a Disney show, remixed dubstep-style, and tossed onto videos as varied as Chief Keef’s gangster opus "“I Don’t Like ft. Lil Reese” to Drop the Cane / Old Man Dancing.
Other Vine remix memes were all about the nonsense. One, featuring the “rapper” Iggy Azalea“freestyling” incomprehensibly, splattered various videos with spittle for weeks, while another, featuring a video of an earthworm spasming to everything from Nu Metal (see above) to classical riffs, kind of got us wishing we could join a party under the soil.
Without a doubt, the biggest impact on musical memes in 2015 was the all-star rapper Drake, who at times became a meme until himself, elevated from music to another plane. At times he seemed to embrace his memedom; take for instance the episode of his feud with rapper Meek Mill, which blew up Black Twitter for weeks, involved government representatives of Toronto and corporations worldwide, and generally caused a huge sensation online. Drake celebrated his victory in the feud by playing a slideshow of tweets, image macros, and other online burns at a victory lap concert called Ovo Fest; he also spent a considerable amount of time sharing them with his friends Kanye West and Will Smith, an almost touching moment recorded below.
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A selection of feud-related reaction images and memes
Other times, Drake let the memes wash over him, like with his record cover for If You’re Reading This Its Too Late, the graffiti-inflected writing of which inspired not only home-made parodies, but its own meme generator. The art, by New York City graffiti artist Jim Joe, quickly entered the cultural lexicon and shaped the year’s aesthetic.
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But the biggest Drake meme of the year was one he almost certainly had a hand in intentionally creating: the video for his sleeper single “Hotline Bling”. Filmed in a James Turrell-influenced gradient light world, the video referenced trap music, vaporwave and weird white people dancing in all the right ways, and it set off a furor that will probably continue strong into 2016.
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