About

"Sail" is a song by alternative rock band Awolnation. Originally released in 2010, the song would later gain notoriety in 2012 in a series of Fail videos, particularly of animals falling.

History

"Sail" was originally part of Awolnation's debut five-track EP Back from Earth, released on May 18th, 2010 through Red Bull Records. On November 8th, the song was released as a single, with it later being featured on the band's debut album Megalithic Symphony. A music video for the track was uploaded to Red Bull Records on April 21st, 2014, and gained over 89 million views (shown below).

The track is considered the band's most successful single, entering initially at number 89 on the Billboard Hot 100 and dropping out after 20 weeks on the chart, before re-entering a year later and peaking at number 17. "Sail" was first song ever to climb to its peak after a year on the chart and is only second to "Radioactive" by Imagine Dragons for most weeks on the charts, and has received remixes from artists such as Feed Me, Borgore, and even including a remix featuring Kendrick Lamar and Ab-Soul.

Spread

The track began seeing use in Fail videos in 2012. An early, popular example was posted to Tumblr by user videohall on May 13th, 2012. It was reposted to YouTube on June 1st, where it gained over 22 million views (shown below).

This led to the song being popularly used in remix videos of cats falling. A compilation of such videos was published by Neikirk on April 21st, 2013, gaining over 3.5 million views (shown below, left). On November 27th, 2016, YouTuber Infinite Diamonds posted a video in which all the noises of the song were replaced by animal noises, gaining over 358,000 views (shown below, right).

Other variations on the meme used the name of the song as a pun. For example, a video posted by jimmy2296 used a clip from Spongebob Squarepants saying "Mail" instead of "Sail," gaining over 592,000 views (shown below, left). Another post by Nate Knob about Steam sales gained over 3.3 million views (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References