About

"One Week" is a song by Canadian rock band Barenaked Ladies. It was a major hit in the 1990s before finding ironic appreciation online.

Origin

"One Week" was released on September 22nd, 1998, off the Barenaked Ladies album "Stunt."^[1] It was the band's most successful single, reaching number 1 in the US and the UK. It was later featured in several major films from the late 90s and early 2000s, including 10 Things I Hate About You, Digimon: The Movie, and American Pie.

Spread

In 1999, Weird Al Yankovic parodied the song for his album Running With Scissors by making it about one man's obsession with Jerry Springer (shown below, left). On January 12th, 2009, College Humor^[2] parodied the song by making fun of it (shown below, right).

In 2015, Buzzfeed^[3] posted a fan theory about the song that it's secretly about a man killing his wife after the theory spread on Reddit.^[4] The song began generating more ironic appreciation in the mid-2010s alongside the rise of Replacement Remixes and All Star. In late December of 2016, Soundcloud user edes421 uploaded a version of the track where every instrument was replaced with the opening lyric, "It's Been…", that gained over 248,000 plays (shown below).

The track was prominently featured in Neil Cicierega's Mouth Moods album, appearing in back to back tracks on the album (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References