Call Me Maybe Parody Wave

2012

Date: Spring through Summer 2012 · Place: YouTube, originating from Mission, British Columbia · Figures: Carly Rae Jepsen, performer · Justin Bieber, accelerant · Selena Gomez, accelerant · Harvard baseball team, viral seed · Tags: Music Meme, Lip Dub, Viral Cover 01. A Tween Pop Single Eats The Year Carly Rae Jepsen's single Call Me Maybe is released in Canada in September 2011 but breaks globally after Justin Bieber tweets it on 30 December 2011 and posts a lip dub of it with Selena Gomez and Ashley Tisdale on 18 February 2012. A 2 March 2012 dugout video by the Harvard baseball team accelerates the cycle. By summer the song has been covered, parodied, and lip-dubbed by SMU's swim team, Cookie Monster, the United States Olympic swim team, the cast of Sesame Street, and Barack Obama via supercut. The single reaches number one in nineteen countries. 02. The Lip Dub As Native Form Call Me Maybe establishes the celebrity lip dub as a viral category in its own right, separate from the music video and from the cover song. The format will be inherited and industrialized by TikTok beginning in 2018. It is also the first instance of an artist's commercial success being measurably driven by participatory video rather than radio or sales, a transition that will define the pop economy of the decade that follows. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Call Me Maybe' • Billboard, 'How Call Me Maybe Took Over The Summer' (29 June 2012) • Harvard Crimson, 'Harvard Baseball Lip Dub Goes Viral' (5 March 2012)