The ‘It’s Corn’ song was made by youtubers who have had many viral videos : NPR

These days, it’s getting harder and harder to be online without getting to know Tariq, better known as “The Corn Kid.”

His interview with the web channel Recess Therapy went live in early August and quickly went viral on TikTok and YouTube.

Then it became a song.

The song created an Ouroboros of viral moments within viral moments and has been used in over 400,000 TikTok videos since its release. The official music video for “It’s Corn”, released last Sunday, has already amassed over 1.6 million views on YouTube.

Many celebrated this cultural moment for its seriousness and simplicity. Just a boy and loves corn. But for song creators Gregory Brothers, creating viral sensations out of everyday life is nothing new.

The family band of Michael, Evan, Sarah Flynn and Andrew Rose Gregory have produced some of the biggest viral songs of the last decade. You might remember a song made from that moment by a man who went out into the mountains and witnessed a double rainbow and was awed.

Alternatively, “Bed Intruder Song,” which repurposed a news interview with Antoine Dodson, ended up being the most-watched YouTube video of 2010.

A quick look at their YouTube channel history reveals a vast catalog of non-singing songs spanning over a decade.

How did the Gregory brothers achieve such viral success again and again? They think it’s the perfect combination of many factors, including the right kind of original content .

“I think the real purpose of our videos is to find great moments on the internet and celebrate and amplify them. I think that gives our videos some staying power,” said Andrew Gregory.

He also believes that random and sometimes absurd subject matter engages people in ways other music cannot.

“When you turn on Z100 and other pop radio stations, 99.9% of the songs are about love. You can hear the song of

“There are so many love songs in the world, but nothing against love songs,” says Michael Gregory. “We wrote a lot of songs ourselves. But there weren’t enough muffin songs, corn songs, songs about riding a bike and being speared because you were playing Happy Wheels. bottom.”

Music industry analyst Tatiana Sirisano says one of the factors behind their success, apart from being talented musicians, is their deep understanding of online culture.

“They realize that a meme has reached a saturation point, enough people know about it, but people haven’t gotten tired of it yet, and it’s the perfect moment to turn a meme into a meme of sorts. , seems to have a really phenomenal ability to sing,” she says. “And the songs are definitely catchy.”

But she also credits the success of songs like “It’s Corn” to TikTok. TikTok is a platform that didn’t exist when the Gregory Brothers started “songing” viral moments. By its very nature, TikTok not only encourages people to consume viral content, but also encourages them to build that content with their own creative twists.

“It will be more widespread and have more cultural impact because people are working on it in their own way,” says Sirisano.

And it’s precisely this kind of reach that the Gregory brothers make their work accessible to so many.

“You can literally become a hermit. You may have been out of society for four years or decades. says. “Someone will bring you in front of your laptop and show you this video, and you will understand and may weep at the beauty that civilization has created in your absence.”

In this case, the beauty that civilization produced was the collaboration of the Gregory brothers. Julian Shapiro-Burnham, host of Recess Therapy. And of course, Tariq will share the royalty income equally.

“Our main focus has always, and from the beginning, been to ensure that the people in a viral moment benefit from it. Does that make me a memetic socialist memetic leftist? I don’t know if I’ll do it, but I think, ‘That’s the best thing,’ says Michael.

may be so for some people one Better be.

Corn.