KYM Review: Music Memes of 2016

Editor’s Note: This article is part of Know Your Meme’s annual review series looking back at some of the most memorable and popular memes, events and people that defined Internet culture in 2016 as we know it.

---

he music memes in 2016 were marked by a visible presence and solid ideas created by independent musicians, for independent musicians on the internet. 2016’s music memes sprang from the underground, from musicians and humorists who found inspiration from the most obscure sources and turned them into memes.

It was the year of the Word Replacement Remix. It was the year where Gabe the Dog spread everywhere. It was the year that absurdism left a strong footprint in the remix culture, with a level of madness in soundscape that hasn't been seen since the rise of the YouTube Poop subculture in the late 2000s. And it was the year that Smash Mouth’s ""All Star" (1999) and Santana's "Smooth" (1999) reached new heights of memedom, much thanks to the staying power of 90s nostalgia that has taken the meme-making community by storm.

But this is not to say that mainstream music has lost its place on the Internet. Big name recording artists like Drake and Beyonce continued to make splashes on the social media with their new releases and edgy music videos, Taylor Swift and Kanye West had a second round of their long-running celebrity feud on Twitter, while Jay-Z attempted to pave a new a road in online music streaming with his subscription-based venture Tidal. One thing is for certain: In 2016, the spotlight on the stage of music memes heavily shifted away from pop stars to internet musicians.

But above all else, we got some dankass jams out of it, not to mention some pretty good laughs. Without further ado, check out our list of ten most noteworthy music memes of the year 2016.

"You Reposted In the Wrong Neighborhood"

The way a song becomes a meme is usually pretty straightforward. Either a pop song goes insanely viral and achieves instant meme status (Gangnam Style, Hotline Bling), an old, canonically popular song gets recontextualized in new remix videos (Sound of Silence, Mad World), or a song is designed to go viral through its absurdity (Crazy Frog’s “Axel F,” Peanut Butter Jelly Time). You Reposted In the Wrong Neighborhood, however, became a meme without following the path of any of its predecessors. Instead, it just sort of… appeared, and kept reappearing until it became practically obligatory that every popular remix fad of 2016 have a “You Reposted in the Wrong Neighborhood” version. Charizard and Dragonite Dance Remixes, All Star, and even Kahoot all had popular “You Reposted…” remixes.

So what an obscure Soundcloud song so popular? ＳＨＯＫＫ青’s mashup of Nate Dogg and Eminem’s “Shake That” and “Casin” by glue70 strikes a perfect balance between being crass and sublimely funky. The instrumental recalls the upbeat end of Vaporwave with its late 70s disco glitz, which makes Nate’s supremely crass opening couplet (“Two to the One to the One to the Three/ I like good pussy and I like good trees.”) incredibly funny. It’s a perfect blend of hilarious and catchy, and the beat somehow seems to go with everything. Some of the best pop artists wish they released a song this good in 2016.

The Nutshack Theme

It’s. The. Nutshack. And It’s. The. Mother of all noun replacement memes that spread like crazy during the second half of 2016. The Nutshack theme, if you haven’t already heard it, is an edgelord’s wet dream, a repetitive rap seeping with DGAF ATTITUDE that introduces all the characters and their motivations. It’s phenomenally stupid, which made it a phenomenally good vehicle for an old Youtube poop trend in which every noun or every “Nutshack” is replaced with something else.

The popularity of The Nutshack theme led to increasingly surreal and increasingly long remixes. Should you choose, you could watch “the nutshack theme but every nutshack is replaced with macintosh plus” for 2 hours, or “the nutshack theme but every nutshack is replaced with the entire bee movie script” for 14. The Nutshack Theme became the place where seemingly every 2016 meme collapsed in on itself, a meme of pure madness where the joke was simply the insanity of the remix. Nutshack Theme edits are a post-modern hellscape that exist to take up empty space in the internet. Even the creators don’t know what they’re doing; many of the remixes are uploaded by creators who admit in the “About” sections that they don’t understand why they made it. The Nutshack calls to them. Start the clock until we get the Nutshack Remix where every Nutshack is replaced by the KnowYourMeme summary of The Nutshack Theme.

"We Are Number One"

I once spent a few months living with my sister and her baby daughter, and in that time, I watched so much bad children’s television. It was hell; you don’t know what the heat death of the universe will be like until you’ve heard “The Hot Dog Dance” from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse six times a day every day for weeks on end. But this time did give me the ability to appreciate children’s TV when it’s good, so I have to give props to LazyTown. The Icelandic children’s show may look like neon dystopic creation of Spy Kids’ Floop, but it has churned out some pretty great songs. And this year, Cooking By The Book finally had its successor: We Are Number One.

Robbie Rotten’s Klezmer-cribbing anthem is a cute instructional song to his villainous clones, who, naturally, are bumbling morons. The track, however, became ripe for the memeing in 2016 when remix-king SiIvaGunner found it. His mix of “We Are Number One” into a certified club-banger has hit nearly a million views and launched over a hundred variations.

The variations have gone the way of The Nutshack Theme in that seemingly each new one became more shitpost that the last, but that remixers found it necessary to wring every last drop of blood from this horse is a testament to the infectious awesomeness of “We Are Number One.”

But It Keeps Getting Faster

From the Undertale fandom sprang the most anxiety-inducing music meme of 2016: songs that keep getting faster. 2016 found the spread of pop songs remixed such that they slowly turn into hyper-fast, chipmunk-voiced abominations. Tumblr user stainedinlavenderblood published the first example using the song “Bonetrousle” from the Undertale soundtrack.

The idea stayed in the Undertale community for a few months until August, when a Tumblr devoted to the remix style, Keeps-Getting-Faster, began posting remixes of classic pop songs. Britney Spears’ “Toxic,” A-ha’s “Take On Me,” The Killers’ “Mr. Brightside,” and more were all subject to the “keeps getting faster” treatment, making them all sound like the audio equivalent of a roller-coaster going off the rails. For my money, the best remix is of the title track from “Phantom of the Opera.” Reducing such a melodramatic song to pipsqueaks makes for comedy gold. Perhaps fittingly, the fad has seemed to lose steam after its initial popularity, but the library of tracks the fad spiralled into madness will be funny for years to come.

"Smooth"

I don’t know what caused this. I don’t know why it was Smooth featuring Rob Thomas and not, say, “Game of Love” featuring Michelle Branch. Maybe it’s Santana’s slick guitar lick that announces before Rob Thomas that “Smooth” will be a “hot one.” Or maybe it’s Rob Thomas’s weird grunge accent that is more frozen in the late-90s/early-2000s than frosted tips. But holy shit, did “Smooth” blow up this year.

The classic 1999 jam about sex and hot weather had been slowly generating ironic fandom, reaching a fever pitch in 2016 when Redbubble created a shirt that simply read: “I’d Rather Be Listening to Grammy-Award Winning 1999 Hit Smooth By Santana Feat. Rob Thomas of Matchbox Twenty.” The shirt drew the attention of Rob Thomas, who retweeted a picture of a fan wearing it. “Smooth” even made an appearance at the 2016 Summer Olympics, and led Vox to wonder just why the hell this was happening. No definitive conclusion was ever reached-- “Smooth” is just a great song everyone remembers, loves, and decided to resuscitate as a meme.

"The Boys Are Back in Town"

Since Thin Lizzy’s The Boys Are Back In Town was released in 1976, people have generally agreed that it’s a great classic rock song. In 2016, however, Twitter suddenly came to the consensus that it was the best song of all time. Like many great internet goofs, this is largely the fault of Weird Twitter hero @dril, who on November 29th, 2015 tweeted “its fucked up how there are like 1000 christmas songs but only 1 song aboutr the boys being back in town.”

This set in motion a wild surge of jokes in which the mere reference to Thin Lizzy’s hit was a recipe for comedy gold. That, and the discovery of a single-serving Twitter account devoted to posting the entirety of “The Boys Are Back in Town” in word form in a never-ending loop led one Twitter user to to tweet a scenario where he describes Twitter to his mother as “it’s a website where we disagree about everything except that referencing ‘the boys are back in town’ is funny.”

GiIvaSunner / SiIvaGunner

GiIvaSunner is 2016’s undeniable king of the bait-and-switch. His first high-quality rips work on such a good premise: video-game music that suddenly becomes the theme from The Flinstones. It’s somehow funny every time.

But GiIvaSunner does more than just upload bait-and-switches and certified bangers. He also uses his account to create ARG’s. He develops different characters in the world of his high quality rips, like Mr. Rental. GiIvaSunner, who later changed to SiIvaGunner, puts a stunning amount of detail that’s supposedly just for music and laughs. He had an incredible 2016 before deciding to end his channel in September--that is, before he started uploading again. The future may have more high quality rips for us yet.

"All Star"

Someday, we may see the end of Shrek memes, but by god, "All Star" will never die. In 200 years when an asteroid hits the earth and ushers in a second ice age, with our frostbitten fingers we will make videos where footage of the asteroid’s impact fits perfectly in time with “some-BODY ONCE TOLD ME…” Did you know that in 2016, searches for “Smash Mouth All Star” are higher than they’ve ever been? We have yet to see the peak of “All Star” memes and it’s been 17 years since the song was first released.

Perhaps the absurdity of 2016 led people back to “All Star” in the same way a child would a security blanket. Perhaps Smash Mouth’s optimism in the face of global warming in the song’s second verse led people to latch on to it as a joyous distraction as the world ostensibly goes to hell. Whatever the reason, 2016 had its fair share of entries into the “All Star” lore. Dozens upon dozens of new “All Star” remixes entered our lives this year, many of which work surprisingly well. Then some guy (Jon Sudano) stopped making remixes altogether and just sang the song over dozens of pop instrumentals. “All Star” is rapidly proving itself one of the most adaptable songs ever, the Shakespeare’s Hamlet of trash 90s pop rock. And it will always be there for us as the ice we skate gets thinner and thinner.

The Life of Pablo

Oh yeah, Kanye West. Boy, did that guy have a year. From fashion industry meltdowns to Trump endorsements to butt-play rumors, Kanye West arguably had himself his wackiest year yet. In the center of his media nexus was The Life of Pablo, a sprawling, sometimes transcendent but very inconsistent album that kept the internet buzzing in the way everything West does keeps the internet buzzing. Here’s what the majority agreed on: opener “Ultralight Beam” is incredibly dope. The beginning of “Father Stretch My Hands pt. 2” is awesome. “Wolves” desperately needs to be fixed. It should’ve been called “Swish.” Also, that cover is terrible.

You’d think that supposedly one of the most visionary artists of our generation wouldn’t go full Graphic Design is My Passion for his album cover, but that’s Kanye. The Life of Pablo cover is deeply ripe for parody, a fact not lost on meme makers who quickly photoshopped a bunch of text overlapping some more text and pasted a poorly-integrated picture onto an orange background. It was the start of a bizarre year for Kanye, one that eventually found him in the hospital due to exhaustion. It seems like Kanye West needs a break, and perhaps we could all use a break from him.

J. Cole Went Platinum With No Features

Nothing gets the internet going like the catchphrases of internet numbskulls. Think It’s about ethics in gaming journalism or Jet Fuel Can’t Melt Steel Beams. In hip-hop, that phrase is J. Cole went platinum with no features, a refrain of overzealous J. Cole fans who are deeply impressed with the fact their favorite rapper went platinum with his third studio album, 2014 Forest Hills Drive, without the help of guest artists.

First off, J. Cole is, let’s say, a divisive figure in hip-hop. He’s a love-him-or-hate-him kind of artist. When J. Cole fans brag about his success without the help of guest artists, they’re trying to prove that he’s intrinsically talented enough to sell records on his own. Does that make him a good rapper? Many don’t seem to think so, and the zealotry of his fans illustrated a good reason why. “J. Cole went platinum with no features” is that line said by that guy who thinks Suicide Squad was good because Jared Leto’s Joker had a comic-accurate back tattoo or that Han shot first. It’s fandom taken to its irritating extremes, and it got the mockery it deserved in 2016.