The Sound of Memes: How Music Enhances the Meme Experience

As a species, humans have enjoyed and created music since prehistoric times. It is an art form that transcends cultures and continuously evolves with the times. Meme culture is no exception to the prevalence of music, as memes in video format are often accompanied by songs that may or may not be relevant. While some are just fads, others have stood the test of time and have even propelled songs into the mainstream, often years after their initial release.

While it is somewhat impossible to cover every single song that has shaken up the memesphere, there are trends between each that give them a widespread impact. In order to better understand their effect, let’s look at some of the histories of meme music, how their inclusion has changed and how they have become a cornerstone of meme culture.

The Beginning (Late 2000s-early 2010s)

In the early 2000s, video streaming was still in its infancy, and the vast majority of memes took the form of photoshops and captioned images. There were a few exceptions, such as content found on Newgrounds, particularly classics like All Your Base Are Belong to Us. A renowned favorite today, All Your Base is a noteworthy example among the earliest days of internet memes, which was largely propelled into fame because of the relationship between the meme and the song, “Invasion of the Gabber Robots,” by The Laziest Men On Mars.

Even so, most memes of that era were relegated to two dimensions and silence. However, the launch of YouTube and other video-hosting services allowed for songs and memes alike to embrace a new medium. Naturally, meme videos in the form of YouTube Poops (YTP) would be some of the first to use music in their creations for comedic effect, particularly with YTP Music Videos.

Sometimes, it would occur in the form of a remix like cs188’s video “YouTube Poop: Nickelsh!t Write A Song About Bodily Functions,” which would not be the last time Nickelback’s “Look at this Photograph” would be memed. It is also through YTPs that lesser-known songs and artists would gain newfound popularity. Whether it be classics like “In the Hall of the Mountain King” by Edvard Grieg or more off-stream music like “Spanish Flea” by Herb Alpbert, these songs would become staples of YouTube Poops, parodies and montages. Rising from relative obscurity, these songs would reach such ubiquity that they would often be labeled as songs that nearly everyone had heard, but nobody knew the name of. As iconic as these songs became, there was one that truly defined the late 2000s and has since been ingrained in the minds of hundreds of millions of people.

The iconic electric drum intro leads to a man at the microphone tilting his head 90 degrees to the left. Only then do you realize that the link you clicked wasn’t for a free iTunes gift card. As Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” blares through your speakers, a feeling of disappointment arises from within your soul. You have been Rickrolled, and not for the first or last time. Rickrolling was one of the most popular memes of the late 2000s, and its legacy is alive today, both as a song and a meme. In addition to popularizing the bait-and-switch video format, the song itself continues to be remixed in new versions, such as “Never Gonna Hit Those Notes” by susboy.

Modern Evolution (2010s to present)

Entering the 2010s, songs in memes would mainly be used in a similar vein to their predecessors: background music, which added depth to the memes. MLG montage parodies and their heavy use of dubstep added to the already bombastic visuals, forever associating songs like “I Keep Holding On (My Hope Will Never Die)” with memes. It was not until the last several years that songs tied themselves with memes in a different manner.

While there are still songs that feature as backgrounds to memes, such as “Song for Denise” by Piano Fantasia in the Wide Putin Walking meme, others have taken a more prominent approach to their inclusion. One relevant example is the presence of Baka Mitai from the Yakuza series of deepfake memes. Instead of being simply background noise, the face-rigged abominations singing it in harmony make the song a fundamental part of the meme itself. Regardless, what all of these songs have in common is their ability to instill association with the memes they represent.

Between the early 2000s and today, the one thing that remains consistent throughout all of the examples is how their identities became tied with the memes they were featured in. Just as movies and shows have memorable opening themes, memes have reached the point where they now have ideas of their own. Memes such as Xue Hua Piao Piao are defined by and incomplete without their matching song.

While TikTok has also contributed immensely to the creation and popularization of new meme songs (like “Yi Jian Mei” in the meme previously mentioned), the origins of meme music go back to the earliest days of online video streaming. Although memes come and go like the wind these days, the songs that go with them remain forever stuck in association, whether they like it or not.

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