About

Chico Buarque Album Cover, originating in Portuguese as Chico Feliz E Chico Sério or Chico Bipolar, refers to an image macro and reaction image featuring two images of the Brazilian singer Chico Buarque side by side, originating as an album cover. One image shows Chico with a sad face and the other has the Brazilian smiling. The image is paired with captions in Portuguese and English, and gained popularity in June 2014 on Facebook.

Origin

In 1966, the Brazilian singer released his debut self-titled album Chico Buarque de Hollanda. He explained in an interview^[1] the idea behind the album's cover happened because he wanted a serious photo that would express respect but the record label, however, preferred an image of him smiling. The result was a cover with both options (seen below). One of the earliest available posts with the image was uploaded on September 10th, 2006, by Discos do Brasil^[2] website.

Spread

The image started to be used as an image macro around April 2014 on Facebook. On April 16th, 2014, the news page^[3] Glamurama posted a news article showing how the artist's album cover was turned into a meme. The post (seen below) received 11 likes in nine years.

The most common usage of the meme utilizes Chico's different facial expressions to express a change in perspective or when something good happens. For instance, Facebook^[4] page Srlupulo used the album cover with the overlay text in Portuguese "craft beer" under the smiling Chico and "corn-based beer" under the serious Chico. The post (seen below, left), uploaded on June 25th, 2014, garnered 29 likes and four shares in nine years. Another example, posted on September 13th, 2014, by Facebook^[5] user huntyv2, shows the album cover being used alongside mug shot images to joke about fans of certain animes. The image (seen below, right) received 33 likes and 24 shares in nine years.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References