About

Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs is an album recorded by Marty Robbins and released by Columbia Records in 1959. It has gained popularity due in part to the inclusion of the song Big Iron in the video game Fallout: New Vegas. The cover is frequently the subject of photoshopped album cover parodies.

Origin

In September 1959, Marty Robbins's album Gunfighter Ballads and Trails Songs was released in the United States.^[1] Bruce Ider of All Music wrote that it is "The single most influential album of Western songs in post-World War II American music."^[2]

The album was selected for induction into the US Library of Congress National Recording Registry in 2017.^[3]

Spread

On October 19th, 2010, video game developer Bethesda published the video game Fallout: New Vegas, developed by Obsidian Entertainment. The game features the song “Big Iron” by Marty Robbins, which was the first track on Gunfighter Ballads On March 28th, 2011, the song was uploaded to YouTube, where it received more than 11.8 million views in eight years (shown below, left).

On October 30th, 2012, YouTuber Hiryuzz posted a music video for the song “Big Iron” that uses footage from the game. The post received more than 46,000 views in six years (shown below, right).

On August 29th, 2017, YouTuber Joseph Salvador posted an ear rape version of the song. The post received more than 11,000 views in one year (shown below).

In 2017, the cover for the album became the subject of a photoshop series. The earliest known version was posted on October 8th, 2017 by AminoApps^[5] user A Dead Meme (shown below, left).

Over the next year, more versions of the meme was posted on sites such as 4chan, ^[4][6] Reddit ^[7] and more (examples below, center and right).

On Februay 14th, 2019, New York^[8] magazine published an article about the memes based on the song.

Additionally, the article highlighted examples of the song used on TikTok (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References