About

I'm Han Solo refers to a song featured in Kinect Star Wars, the Star Wars themed game for the Xbox Kinect, in which Star Wars character Han Solo dances to a reimagined version of Jason Derulo's "Ridin' Solo" with lyrics changed to fit the character. The song spread online thanks to some viral videos, particularly an episode of JonTron in which Jon Jafari played the game.

Origin

The song appears in Kinect Star Wars, released April 3rd, 2012.^[1] The day the game was released, the song and its video was uploaded to YouTube (shown below). The song is a reimagining of the song "Ridin' Solo" by Jason Derulo with the lyrics altered to read "I’m picking up my blaster / Put it on my side / I’m jumpin’ in my Falcon / Wookiee at my side / I’m Han Solo."

Spread

Early reviews of the dance were scathing. Joystiq^[2] said of the dance, "Honestly, the depiction of a Han Solo as a dancing dreamboat could very well drive Harrison Ford to commit suicide just so he can roll over in his grave." A month after the game's release, Jontron uploaded his review of Kinect Star Wars. Towards the end of the video, he plays the "I'm Han Solo" song and gives an over-the-top reaction. The video gained over 8 million views (shown below, left). He later recreated the dance with Arin Hanson, his former Game Grumps partner, in his "Starcade" series (shown below, right).

After Jontron helped the song gain infamy online, parodies appeared online. One of the most popular examples, posted by Tom Benda on September 6th, 2016, used the song in the Video Games Appeal to the Male Fantasy meme, greatly helping that meme's spread (shown below, left). SiivaGunner posted a remix of the song on December 25th of that year, gaining over 400,000 views (shown below, right).

On February 7th, 2018, YouTuber Shooptube used the song in a parody of the trailer for Solo: A Star Wars Story, gaining over 410,000 views (shown below). Select All^[3] ran an interview with Kevin Afflack who produced the music for the mode on May 22nd, 2018.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References