About

Life Goes On refers to the single released by musician Oliver Tree in early 2021. The song, becoming a commercial success for Oliver, received attention online in the form of memes and Misheard Lyrics due to the chorus shortly after it's release. The audio from the song is popular on TikTok as a background track for looping animations, repeated actions, and time lapse video edits.

Origin

On November 3rd, 2020, musical artist OIiver Tree performed his upcoming single Life Goes On as part of the Late Show With Stephen Colbert, as one of the first recorded performances^[1] of the song. The performance, which gained over 17 million views in three years , was quickly overshadowed by the official music video release on May 28th, 2021, which garnered over 327 million views in two years (shown below, left and right).

Spread

After it's release, the song began to receive meme attention in the form of mishearing the lyrics and restating them. On October 31st, 2021, the YouTube channel InternetThings^[2] reuploaded a video of a kid recreating a scene from Spider-Man: No Way Home and singing the chorus as 'onionionionioni' receiving over 316,000 views in two years and spreading the audio on other sites like TikTok (shown below).

In mid-2021, the song began to receive attention in a different context for memes, as a background song for a continuous action being shown in the foreground. This context would take the chorus, sung correctly from the official audio, and use it as a background looping sound to show a repeated action. On October 27th, 2021, the TikToker mr.artt^[3] used the audio to showcase a constantly zooming in animation loop, earning over 6.5 million views in two years (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References