About

Scream-Singing "Where Have You Been All My Life" refers to a series of viral videos based on an original video of a Latina woman in a red dress singing the chorus of Rihanna's "Where Have You Been" at a high volume. The original video was posted by TikToker @laraluiza0001 in late 2022. Satirical copycats and parodies then followed from others on TikTok like chrishoffish and Alex Cosani in 2023. The trend was prevalent in FlopTok meme circles where creators also added captions to @laraluiza0001's original video. Scream-singing the Rihanna song also spread to Twitter in 2023, where more reenacted the original.

Origin

On December 9th, 2022, TikToker^[1] @laraluiza0001 posted a video in which she was wearing a red dress, sitting in a chair and singing the chorus of Rihanna's song "Where Have You Been."^[2] The TikToker was singing the lyrics, "Where have you been all my life," at a high volume, practically screaming. Over the course of eight months, the video gained roughly 14.3 million plays and 1.7 million likes (shown below).

Spread

After the video's upload, it gained viral duets and stitches. For instance, an early example was posted by TikToker^[3] @deadlittlebirdies on December 15th, 2022, who pretended to be her downstairs neighbor, gaining roughly 23,600 plays and 580 likes in eight months (shown below, left). On January 12th, 2023, TikToker^[4] @leoosd_ posted the first-known reenactment of the original video, gaining roughly 31,700 plays and 520 likes in seven months (shown below, right).

Continuing into early 2023, Spanish and Portuguese-speaking TikTokers started to reference the video, such as TikToker^[5] @eduard0u on February 9th, 2023, who received roughly 1.3 million plays and 282,500 likes in six months (shown below, left). Creators also started to caption the original video, such as TikToker^[6] @mochi_flop on May 22nd, 2023, writing, "me after stubbing my toe but my crush is watching," gaining roughly 45,500 plays and 1,600 likes in three months (shown below, right).

On June 30th, 2023, TikToker^[7] @captincroook (also known as Alex Cosani) notably posted a reenactment of the original video, gaining roughly 2.2 million plays and 361,900 likes in one month (shown below, left). On July 11th, 2023, TikToker^[8] @chrishoffish also posted a notable reenactment, gaining roughly 15.5 million plays and 2.8 million likes in one month (shown below, right).

@captincroook, @chrishoffish and @laraluiza0001 were then all combined into one video showing all of them scream-singing at the same time. TikToker^[10] @lil.miss.jaundice was the first to combine them into one video on July 12th, labeling them "my last 3 brain cells," and gaining roughly 601,500 plays and 117,100 likes in three weeks (shown below).

@chrisoffish's TikTok^[8] also went viral on Twitter^[10] via a repost from Twitter user @nonbinarybooty on July 11th, 2023. The tweet started a thread that ended with Twitter^[11] user @joe_woh combining all three on July 12th, similarly to TikToker^[9] @lil.miss.jaundice. Although @joe_woh's reply only gained over 650 likes, a quote retweet of his video posted by Twitter^[12] user @vandedjan on July 13th gained roughly 40,800 likes in three weeks, captioning it with the name of the indie band "boygenius" (shown below).

Boygenius pic.twitter.com/M8OFoThYnS

— little twee biotweelia (@vandedjan) July 13, 2023

TikTok^[13] and Twitter^[14] videos that referenced the trend continued to go viral in late July and early August 2023.

Various Examples

can you hear me good? @rihanna pic.twitter.com/2xyJ6PyAKG

— jimmy (@jimmyoutsold) August 2, 2023

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References