#Parklife

About

#Parklife is a hashtag inspired by the memorable narration featured in Blur's 1994 eponymous hit single and coined by British marketing consultant Dan Barker to make fun of British actor-comedian Russell Brand's tendencies to derail into anti-authoritarian tirades in his public appearances and interviews.

Origin

On October 14th, 2014, Random House published Brand’s political commentary book Revolution^[1], which advocates a social revolution to bring about an end to "corporate tyranny, ecological irresponsibility and economic inequality." On November 2nd, British marketing consultant Dan Barker^[2] posted a quote from the book, noting that it reminded him of actor Phil Daniels’ narration from Blur's 1994 hit single “Parklife” (shown below). In the first 48 hours, the tweet gained over 8,100 retweets and 5,700 favorites.

Spread

Shortly after Barker's tweet went live, many Twitter users in the UK began tweeting "Parklife!" at the 39-year-old British actor-comedian's account and the joke quickly caught on among the anti-fans of the comedian as well as the fans of the 90s' Britpop band Blur. Within the first 48 hours, the title of the song was mentioned more than 10,000 times on Twitter, according to Topsy Analytics.^[9]

On November 4th, Viner Alan White posted a mashup video featuring select footage from Brand's BBC Newsnight interview and the original music video for Blur's "Parklife" (shown below). Within the first 24 hours, the Vines accumulated more than 200,000 plays. By November 5th, Brand himself had presumably embraced the joke with the following tweet:

Throughout that week, several news sites reported on the #Parklife hashtag phenomenon, including BuzzFeed,^[3] The Independent,^[4] Express,^[5] Metro^[6] and Reason.^[7]

Russell Brand's Self-Parody Music Video

On November 10th, Russell Brand released a self-parody music video in which he sings about anti-consumerism and class strife to a cover performance of "Parklife" by the Irish comedy hiphop duo The Rubberbandits. In less than 24 hour of upload, the video gathered more than 270,000 views (shown below).

Search Interest

External References