About

Marcel's Favorite Song refers to a scene from the sitcom Friends where the character Ross' pet monkey Marcel puts a CD into a CD player, which then begins to play "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" by The Tokens. While Ross, Joey, and Chandler are initially not amused by the song, they eventually begin dancing to it. The scene was later remixed on YouTube using different songs.

Origin

The scene comes from season one, episode eighteen of Friends, "The One With All the Poker," which aired March 2nd, 1995.^[1] While the boys talk about Ross' crush on Rachel, Ross' pet monkey Marcel puts a CD in a CD player, which then begins playing "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" (shown below).

Spread

The earliest known remix of the scene was published to YouTube on May 25th, 2016 by YouTuber Jack- using the English Football chant "Will Grigg's On Fire", gaining over 12,000 views (shown below, left). However, the first popular edit was posted in December of that year and featured the friends dancing to "Bad and Boujee" by Migos. The earliest extant version of the video was posted by T10 on December 28th, 2016 (shown below, right).

The dance was then paired with myriad popular songs. For example, YouTuber The Fonz paired the song with "Pumped Up Kicks" on December 29th and gained over 39,000 views (shown below, left). On August 20th, 2018, YouTuber Cyranek published an edit featuring the Crab Rave song, gaining over 27,000 views (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References