A comedian released this parody Eurodance song — and ignited an internet storm

DJ Crazy Times — aka Kyle Gordon — in his factor.

Toby Tenenbaum

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Toby Tenenbaum

DJ Crazy Times — aka Kyle Gordon — in his factor.

Toby Tenenbaum

The video is a profitable mixture of nostalgia, intrigue and surrealism. And its viral ascent can inform us quite a bit about fashionable meme tradition.

Who is he? Well, it will depend on who you imply.

• The star of the video for Planet of the Bass is DJ Crazy Times, an energetic redheaded DJ and musician who shouts out Slovakia as his dwelling nation and loves peace, music and intercourse.
• The thoughts behind the song, nonetheless, is Kyle Gordon — a Brooklyn primarily based comedian who’s earned a big social media following by posting movies that painting a wide range of eccentric characters.

What’s the massive deal? For a short second, Gordon was in a position to seemingly unite the internet beneath one query: Eurodance was fairly bizarre, proper?

• Late final month, Gordon posted a snippet performing his parody song Planet of the Bass on social media, and instantly grew to become the topic of a cultural internet fervor that’s exhausting to explain – Twitter reviews the clip has racked up 110 million views and acquired over 320,000 likes.

• Perhaps extra shockingly, the song initially drew only a few haters, with its completely positioned grammatical inaccuracies, obscure but particular subject material (love, intercourse, peace, dance), and ’90s futuristic styling. For a short, shining second, it felt like everybody was having fun with the Thing Du Jour.
• And then, the commentary inside the video spawned its personal commentary. The unique clip did not characteristic the unique feminine vocalist – Chrissi Poland. Instead, she was portrayed by comedian Audrey Trullinger, who many took a liking to.
• The following week, one other clip was released that includes a distinct performer; and the internet was up in arms over it.

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• Just a couple of days later, a third model was released, with the grasp of situational cringe, comedian Sabrina Brier, filling the position. By then, those that hadn’t initially gotten the bit satirizing Eurodance teams disposing of feminine performers in precisely the identical manner understood. But did they nonetheless get pleasure from it?

• In some methods, Planet of the Bass is an ideal case examine of the lifecycle of a meme. By the second iteration, folks on-line shared that they had been by means of with the song and felt that it had been overdone. Others had been reeled in by Brier’s rendition of the feminine performer.
• On Tuesday, the complete song and music video had been released, which leaves one query to be answered: does the internet nonetheless care?

What are folks saying? NPR spoke to Gordon about his speedy ascent to virality, and the way it felt totally different from different occasions.

When did you notice this stint at virality was totally different from the others?

I feel it was that first weekend after I posted the primary clip on Twitter. More or much less, I posted on Twitter as a lark as a result of I had a a lot bigger following on TikTok and Instagram. But when this began, I had like 1,300 followers on Twitter.

So after I realized that it was like over that first day and over the weekend, like exploding on Twitter, I used to be like, oh my God, I’m in a distinct ballgame now.

Do folks notice that you simply’re not DJ Crazy Times? (You’re not, proper?)

If you have been following me, you understand that I play tons of various characters. And this is definitely a personality that followers of mine on TikTok particularly would have been accustomed to, as a result of it was one among my extra in style characters.

December 2020, all through that first yr I used to be doing lots of DJ Crazy Times, so [he] has type of been percolating over time. But yeah, the precise tenor of the brand new fandom, of a few of the new followers I’ve, I do not know, I’m nonetheless sort of figuring that out.

Can you communicate on the drama with Ms. Biljana Electronica, the feminine performer featured within the movies?

So the primary video I dropped [was] July 28th, however I had all three movies shot and edited earlier than then. So it was at all times my plan to launch all three.

And as I’ve talked about earlier than, it was type of an homage to a trope of those, like particularly early 90s Eurodance teams that will get a singer to sing the monitor and then if it grew to become in style, they might simply get an actress or a mannequin to be within the music video.

And so it was an homage to that, however … this grew to become a lot larger and it is wonderful that it discovered such a big fan base even outdoors of people who find themselves followers of that music and even actually educated about that music.

I feel after I dropped the second video, they had been like, “Well, Audrey did such an amazing job in the first music video,” and I feel it was like a little bit of whiplash.

But then after I posted the third video, folks type of began to comprehend the bit with out me even actually having to clarify it that a lot. And then, if you happen to noticed the complete music video I dropped at this time, Audrey’s again and she completely crushed it.

Are girls nonetheless your favourite man?

Even in any case this, girls are nonetheless my favourite man. Yeah, I stand by that assertion. You can quote me on that.

So what now?

• Planet of the Bass is featured on Gordon’s upcoming musical parody album that features a wide range of genres, together with Bossa Nova and early 2000s nation pop.
• And Gordon has a string of performances and comedy reveals deliberate for the next months.

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