About

Sh-Boom, often known as Life Could Be A Dream, refers to a 1954 doo-wop song by The Chords and its cover released the same year by The Crew Cuts. Both versions of the song have seen wide use in memes, particularly video edits, over the course of the 2010s and 2020s. It is often associated with footage of monkeys and used as general background music for video edits.

Origin

On March 15th, 1954, the doo-wop group The Chords released the song "Sh-Boom" (shown below, left). That same year, The Crew Cuts, a Canadian group, released a version of the song (shown below, right). Both versions were well-received, each entering the U.S. top-10 charts that year.

Spread

Remixes

On August 1st, 2016, YouTuber TRAP MUSIC NOW uploaded a trap remix of the song by Future James, garnering over 11 million views in five years (shown below).

Use In Memes / Video Edits

On November 23rd, 2019, YouTuber^[1] the cable turned off cade posted a video of a pug dancing^[2] to The Chords' version of "Sh-Boom," garnering over 8.7 million views in roughly two years (shown below).

On November 30th, YouTuber^[3] random content.mp4 used the Crew Cuts' version of the song over a compilation of cursed images, garnering over 25,000 views in a comparable span of time (shown below).

On July 22nd, 2020, YouTuber^[4] Alexis Dragontamer posted a video of the pug dancing to Sh-Boom over cursed images, garnering over 4.4 million views in a year (shown below).

Use In Monkey Videos / Water Monke

The songs are often used over footage of monkeys and apes enjoying themselves, a reference to the Return To Monke meme where people idealize being care-free like apes. On February 18th, 2021, YouTuber^[7] memeski posted a video combining the water monke video with the song, garnering over 6.6 million views in five months (shown below, left). This is not the first video to combine the two, however. On May 4th, YouTuber^[9] RickToons posted an animated interpretation of the water monkey video over the song, garnering over 889,000 views in two months (shown below, right).

On May 14th, YouTuber^[8] OatmealAC posted a video featuring different monkey footage over the song, garnering over 3.4 million views in two months (shown below).

TikTok

The original sound for The Chords "Sh-Boom" is considerably popular on TikTok, with over 200,000 videos using it as of July 2021. Some of the earliest videos using the sound date back to June 2019. The two most popular TikTok^[5][6] videos to use the sound as of the same date are a 2019 upload showing someone stuck in a swing set with over 31 million views (shown below, left) and a 2020 video of a TikToker showing how to do a word trick with coins with over 17 million views (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References