About

“You Raise Me Up” is a 2001 pop song by Norwegian-Irish duo Secret Garden, that has since been covered by hundreds of artists, including Josh Groban, whose 2003 version is among the most popular. The track has been featured in a number of videos on YouTube, Vine and TikTok, typically as the background music for fail clips or other humorous content when someone or something rises up rapidly.

Origin

The original song was composed by Norwegian-Irish duo Secret Garden and released with their album Once in a Red Moon on December 27th, 2001. The song (seen below) was only a minor hit in the United Kingdom before being covered by other artists and popularized in the following years.

In October 2003, American singer-songwriter Josh Groban covered the song on his album Closer (shown below), which quickly became one of the most commonly known versions of the track. Eventually, this cover reached No. 1 on the Billboard adult contemporary chart in 2004.

Spread

The initial spread of “You Raise Me Up” memes appeared online around 2015-2016 on Vine shortly before the platform folded. Many examples of these were then uploaded to YouTube in 2016 as the service shut down. YouTuber^[1] Stephanie Zavala uploaded one of the most iconic versions of the meme on April 14th, 2016 (seen below), which has since been viewed over 323,000 times, liked 5,100 times and commented on 99 times.

On April 26th, 2016, YouTuber^[2] OMG Richey uploaded another version under the title, “Old lady falling up stairs,” that also appeared on Vine originally. YouTuber^[3] Jesus Christ then posted a variant (shown below) on February 1st, 2018, featuring the song, which received over 107,000 views, 3,200 likes and 85 comments.

The trend appeared again in 2019-2020 when TikTok launched and introduced both the Josh Groban^[4] and Westlife^[5] versions of the song alongside videos. On May 13th, 2020, TikTok^[6] user codyvlatino uploaded a clip of themselves skateboarding and wiping out to the song (seen below), which received nearly 49,000 likes and 153 comments. TikTok^[7] user billyandwilly7 uploaded another example to their profile (shown below), receiving over 300,000 likes and 4,800 comments.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References