The video is a winning combination of nostalgia, intrigue and surrealism. And its viral ascent can tell us a lot about modern meme culture.
Who is he? Well, it depends on who you mean.
- The star of the video for Planet of the Bass is DJ Crazy Times, an energetic redheaded DJ and musician who shouts out Slovakia and loves peace, music and sex.
- The mind behind the song, however, is Kyle Gordon — a Brooklyn based comedian who's earned a large social media following by posting videos that portray a variety of eccentric characters.
@kylegordonisgreat I repeat: every American city is the same #city #american #tourism #foodie #travel #funny #funnyvideos #funnytiktok ♬ original sound - Kyle Gordon
What's the big deal? For a brief moment, Gordon was able to seemingly unite the internet under one question: Eurodance was pretty weird, right?
- Late last month, Gordon posted a snippet performing his parody song Planet of the Bass on social media, and immediately became the subject of a cultural internet fervor that is hard to describe – Twitter reports the clip has racked up 110 million views and received over 320,000 likes.
@kylegordonisgreat Planet of the Bass (feat. DJ Crazy Times & Ms. Biljana Electronica) #djcrazytimes #eurodance #90s #dancemusic #edm #funny #funnyvideos #funnytiktok ♬ Planet of the Bass (feat. DJ Crazy Times & Ms. Biljana Electronica) - Kyle Gordon
- Perhaps more shockingly, the song initially drew very few haters, with its perfectly placed grammatical inaccuracies, vague yet specific subject matter (love, sex, peace, dance), and '90s futuristic styling. For a brief, shining moment, it felt like everyone was enjoying the Thing Du Jour.
- And then, the commentary within the video spawned its own commentary. The original clip didn't feature the original female vocalist – Chrissi Poland. Instead, she was portrayed by actor Audrey Trullinger, who many took a liking to.
- The following week, another clip was released featuring a different performer, Mara Olney; and the internet was up in arms over it.
Filmed in Zagreb, Croatia pic.twitter.com/BuY3YHk85D
— Kyle Gordon (@kylegordon101) August 3, 2023
Want more from the world of arts and culture? Listen to the Consider This episode on the battle over book bans.
- Just a few days later, a third version was released, with the master of situational cringe, comedian Sabrina Brier, filling the role. By then, those who hadn't initially gotten the bit satirizing Eurodance groups disposing of female performers in exactly the same way understood. But did they still enjoy it?
Full song make a release next week - Aug 15! pic.twitter.com/uY3u7Jkk99
— Kyle Gordon (@kylegordon101) August 7, 2023
- In some ways, Planet of the Bass is a perfect case study of the lifecycle of a meme. By the second iteration, people online shared that they were through with the song and felt that it had been overdone. Others were reeled in by Brier's rendition of the female performer.
- On Tuesday, the full song and music video were released, which leaves one question to be answered: does the internet still care?
Kyle Gordon — Planet of the Bass (feat. DJ Crazy Times & Ms. Biljana Electronica)
YouTubeWhat are people saying? NPR spoke to Gordon about his rapid ascent to virality, and how it felt different from other times.
When did you realize this stint at virality was different from the others?
I think it was that first weekend when I posted the first clip on Twitter. More or less, I posted on Twitter as a lark because I had a much larger following on TikTok and Instagram. But when this started, I had like 1,300 followers on Twitter.
So when I realized that it was like over that first day and over the weekend, like exploding on Twitter, I was like, oh my God, I'm in a different ballgame now.
Do people realize that you're not DJ Crazy Times? (You're not, right?)
If you've been following me, you know that I play tons of different characters. And this is actually a character that followers of mine on TikTok especially would have been familiar with, because it was one of my more popular characters.
December 2020, throughout that first year I was doing a lot of DJ Crazy Times, so [he] has sort of been percolating over the years. But yeah, the exact tenor of the new fandom, of some of the new fans I have, I don't know, I'm still kind of figuring that out.
Can you speak on the drama with Ms. Biljana Electronica, the female performer featured in the videos?
So the first video I dropped [was] July 28th, but I had all three videos shot and edited before then. So it was always my plan to release all three.
And as I've mentioned before, it was sort of an homage to a trope of these, like especially early 90s Eurodance groups that would get a singer to sing the track and then if it became popular, they would just get an actress or a model to be in the music video.
And so it was an homage to that, but ... this became so much bigger and it's amazing that it found such a large fan base even outside of people who are fans of that music or even really knowledgeable about that music.
I think when I dropped the second video, they were like, "Well, Audrey did such an amazing job in the first music video," and I think it was like a bit of whiplash.
But then when I posted the third video, people sort of started to realize the bit without me even really having to explain it that much. And then, if you saw the full music video I dropped today, Audrey's back and she absolutely crushed it.
Are women still your favorite guy?
Even after all this, women are still my favorite guy. Yeah, I stand by that statement. You can quote me on that.
So what now?
- Planet of the Bass is featured on Gordon's upcoming musical parody album that includes a variety of genres, including Bossa Nova and early 2000s country pop.
- And Gordon has a string of performances and comedy shows planned for the following months.
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