Trololo / Edward Hill / Russian Rickroll (2009)

About

Indeed, I am very glad that I finally am returning home (Russian: Я очень рад, ведь я, наконец, возвращаюсь домой) is a Soviet-era pop song composed by Arkady Ostrovsky, performed by Edward Hill (AKA Edward Khill, Eduard Khil), a nationally-honored Russian singer since the late 1960s. Due to much exploitable elements of the music video, it has recently gained momentum as a popular bait-and-switch video, in similar vein to the more notorious usage of Rickroll.

Origin

In November 2009, YouTuber RealPapaPit uploaded a video clip titled “I am very glad, because I’m finally back home”:

Singing in the video is Edward Anatolevich Hill, a Soviet-era vocalist once celebrated as the “Honored Artist of the USSR” in 1968 and “People’s Artist of the USSR” in 1974.

Because Edward’s performance was poorly lipsynched (albeit to his own vocal track) and entirely composed of mouth music without any lyrics, the song was perceived by some westerners as highly eccentric. One of the surreal moments comes in at the chorus part, during which Edward can be heard singing “LOL” over and over again—as though he’s laughing directly at the viewer.

Of course, this is just a comical misinterpretation of him singing “Tro-lo-lo.” In fact, the song still remains quite familiar to the older Russian audiences; the Sovie Azerbaijani singer Muslim Magomaev had previously sung it in the 1960s Soviet television show The Blue Spark:

Additionally, there is an even earlier version of the song, sung by Valery Obodzinsky in 1967.

It’s sung in a style called “vokaliz,” a cognate of the English “vocalise” or vocal exercise. Vokaliz is not, however, a vocal exercise but a style of singing similar to pantomime or even American scat singing of the 1920s.

Spread

Trololo (as seen above) video was uploaded by YouTuber KamoKatt on December 20th, 2009 and has since inspired a number of video derivatives, as well as a Single Serving Site trololololololololololo.com/ created on February 26th, 2010.

One of the primary sources of views to the video first came from the article on Trolls on Lurkmore.ru, the Russian port of the Lurkmore Wiki; evidenced by point G on the graph above.
(Click here for the Google Translated English version)

On January 27th, 2010, A Reddit thread called trololololololololo was posted by gn3xu5.

Another version of the video with the original Cryllic tital Я очень рад, ведь я, наконец, возвращаюсь домой was posted on Youtube by RealPapaPit earlier, on November 26th, 2009, but didn’t begin to accrue many views until after the video made its Reddit Debut.

By February 21st, the video appeared on The Huffington Post ([oint C) and by March 1st it appeared on BoingBoing (points A and B) further increasing the public awareness of this bizarre video.

Trends

Although Google Insights returns a years-long trend for “Edward Hill” it should not be assumed that they are all for this Edward Hill, as the name refers to a number of historical figures. However, searches for “Edward Hill” and “trololo” have shown a marked increase in Feburary of 2010.

Trolololol Derivatives

Other Sources

• Edward Gil on Oddculture.com
• EDWARD ANATOLEVICH HILL on 3 Quarks Daily

UPDATE Edward responds to the popularity of the video: