I remember where I was the first time that I heard this song. How could I forget? I was nowhere other than sitting in Máni Svavarsson’s studio at LazyTown HQ in Iceland. One by one, Máni was graciously showing me some sneak peaks to each of songs that he had been working for on the latest season, something I had only ever dreamed of happening. When he put We Are Number One on, as you may know, it started with its little wonky saxophone measure, and then all of a sudden, breaks into very direct ska. Not LazyTown-with-a-twist-of-ska, just ska. I was shocked at what I was hearing, and I remember yelling over the music to Máni, “This doesn’t sound at all like LazyTown!” I wasn’t saying that as a bad thing, not at all, but it certainly was not what I thought would start coming out of his speakers. The song left an immediate impression on me, no doubt about that.
The original
Shortly after I got back home, and after I got over the depression of having to leave Heaven on Earth, I was in my friend’s car, and told him that he absolutely had to listen to two of the new LazyTown songs that I had heard while in Iceland. He is not a LazyTown fan, and I didn’t particularly think he would like the songs or care at all, but something drove me to show him the songs anyway. I suppose that’s just what happens when you are excited about something; you just want to show the world! In my case, I couldn’t show the world since the songs hadn’t released yet, so my world had shrunk significantly, just down to one guy who wouldn’t care anyway. So after just a little protesting from him and an alright-lets-just-get-this-over-with type of face, I threw on Dancing On The Moon and We Are Number One. As I expected, he didn’t seem to care a whole lot, giving me a half-hearted, “Yep, those were pretty good.” I was just happy to scratch the itch to show it to someone all the same. As the days, weeks, and months went by, I continued listening to the song, but no matter how many times I listened to it and knew exactly what to expect, the way that it breaks into ska at the beginning kept surprising me, over and over.
Since then, season 4 had released, the song was well-received by LazyTown fans, and that was pretty much that. Or at least it was, until about 3 months ago, when the song started to gain popularity as a quirky, fun song that some people enjoyed using to make bizarre creations. That’s not an uncommon phenomenon for LazyTown, as the same quality that attracts me to the show also brings in outsiders from time to time. Because of that, I wasn’t “surprised” that the song began to catch on, but its popularity largely existed in my peripherals, and I had no idea that the magnitude of the song’s popularity, and its subsequent memetic corruptions, began to snowball.
My introduction to the meme in September
I had no idea what I was in for
I didn’t quite understand how big this whole thing had become until Stefán Karl, Robbie Rotten’s primary portrayer, was diagnosed with cancer. I learned of the terrible news in early October, and just as to many others, it was very upsetting. I mean, it’s Stefán Karl! It’s Robbie fucking Rotten! He is an absolute legend to me, and it never even crossed my mind that something like this could even happen. The news was a little hush-hush, but a few weeks later, the news was announced to LazyTown fans, and that’s when the rest of the world found out. The announcement came from Mark Valenti, the gentleman who was the head writer for LazyTown while it was on the air. The LazyTown fans that I know were all just was devastated as I was, but the news that Stefán had cancer was only half the announcement. We didn’t just have to sit in sadness; we could make a difference in Stefán’s life, because the other half was that Mark had created a GoFundMe page to raise money for Stefán and his family to use during his tough times ahead, with a goal of $10,000. Of course, I chipped in, and was very pleased to see many names of people that I recognized from the LazyTown fanbase showing their support. However, I admit that I had a terrible fear that the fund would raise a few thousand dollars and then peter out, resulting in what could largely be considered a failure. However, that is not at all what happened. The money soon came pouring in from people clearly from the meme crowd. That’s when I, as well as Stefán, Máni, Mark, and many others were formally introduced to the craze.
The announcement to the LazyTown world
I began to scramble around a bit, trying to figure out what the heck was going on, and what I had missed while not paying enough attention. I don’t think I was the only one to find the success a surprise, and I imagine that the others were doing the same. I started flailing around YouTube and Soundcloud and facebook, where I found an absolute sea of people’s strange creations that I had no idea existed, and I eventually landed on somewhat of a center of it all, a facebook page called “Lazy Town Memes”. The page was not exactly a catalyst for the meme (actually, from what I have come to understand, the remix I linked a little bit above was), and is by no means the only place where the LazyMemers congregate, but it did have a very large following and many of the donators to the fund kept mentioning it. While normally was dedicated to propagating the dankest LazyTown memes, it was now using their influence to spread the word of Stefán’s situation, and of the donation campaign. I just wanted to know who they were and what they were all about, as they were doing a great service. I reached out to the admins of the page, and spoke with one of them, a woman named Nicolas. She knew of me, and we had a pleasant exchange about the meta LazyTown fanbase, Stefán’s situation, and I of course thanked her for what they were doing. The page has only grown since then, now with 116,000 followers.
The spread and popularity of this thing became more apparent to me when Stefán did a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) session to bring attention to the fund set up for him. Questions came flooding in from the memers, and in turn, so did the donations. I was relieved to see that most of the questions were honest and heartfelt, and not just trashy questions referencing the joke. In fact, the AMA became the 11th most popular of all time. I mean seriously, what the actual fuck? Let me take a moment to list off some of the names that are below Stefán’s AMA: Bernie Sanders, Buzz Aldrin, Peter Dinklage, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Bill Gates. Let me repeat that last one: Bill Gates. What an absolute trip this was all starting to become.
The memes just kept on being created and shared, as well as the link to the GoFundMe donation page, so the fund’s goals kept being met: $20,000, $30,000, $50,000, $75,000… it just kept going. Somehow, every time it met a new goal, it never ceased to amaze me.
The latest big event surrounding this monster was no later than a few days ago, when in Máni’s home studio in Iceland, was Máni and Stefán, as well as Björn Thors , Snorri Engilbertsson, and Bergur Þór, the actors who played the three one-off characters in the song and the episode that the song came from, who met to do a live stream in honor of the song’s popularity. Only tens of thousands of people tuned in live, and hundreds of thousands so far have watched the recording… so just a handful. The five men spoke about their experiences from working on that song and their thoughts on the uptick in popularity and just had a grand old time. As a fan, the two highlights were the original quartet performing the famous song live, as well Máni’s announcement that he would be releasing the stems (the individual tracks) from the song. I don’t want to understate that last part there, because the move to do that is a big deal. It wasn’t as easy as, “Here you go,” Máni had to jump through legal hoops to get permission to do that, and it is a totally unprecedented move in LazyTown’s over 20 years of history. It is a dream come true for a LazyTown fan, and for the many, many remixers of the song out there, it’s not only a tremendous gift, but also a tremendous gesture of appreciation by Máni for their work. All that said, on a personal level, everything else was overshadowed by my happiness of seeing Stefán just being Stefán. Even though everyone kept saying that he was recovering well and never lost his touch, I still couldn’t kick the thought of a pale, sickly, bald Stefán, wandering around the hospital ward in a half-tied gown. It took a great emotional weight off just to see him smiling and laughing and dancing around.
The live event
Máni messaged me the next day, as he was preparing to make good on his promise to release the tracks. He wanted my advice on where they should go, whether on Soundcloud or facebook or YouTube or what. He was also consulting with Mark and Steina, Stefán’s wife, during the process. We ultimately decided to put it everywhere. Máni was hesitant though about YouTube, because some actual video editing work had to be done to properly make the video, which he wasn’t sure he was capable of, so I offered to do it. I guess at the time I didn’t really grasp what I had offered to do. I was at work at the time, so I couldn’t do it right then and there, and Máni knew that, but he blew my mind when he sent me a message saying, “Steina is asking when Chris is going to have the YouTube video ready.” I guess that moment, when I had Stefán Karl’s wife hounding me for a video, is when it kind of sunk in that I had just gotten myself involved.
I was eager to get home and make the video, so I rushed out of there, grabbed some food upstairs at home, then headed into my room telling my roommates I had some “Official LazyTown Business” to do. That phrase has been a joke between me and my friends for when I’m working on something LazyTown related, but there have been times when it was dead serious. I’d say this counts as one of them. And so, I spent the next couple of hours making some assets, cutting together the video, reviewing it, and sending it to Steina to upload on Stefán’s personal YouTube account.
A great tool for me over the years has been a LazyTown style guide (a guide that tells you the exact colors, fonts, pictures, patterns, and so on, that should be used for official LazyTown products) from 2010, and just like many projects I’ve made in the past, it was used as a reference to create assets for the video. Things like these are not supposed to be available to the general public, but in a funny twist, this one was accidentally leaked a few years ago by none other than… Stefán Karl! I never thought I would be using it to make something for the man himself!
At the time of writing this, it’s only three days after, but the video already has a few hundred thousand views, and about 3,000 comments. I’ve read every single one, and they’re overwhelmingly positive. The people are absolutely loving the ability to hear and appreciate each track, and they can’t wait to either make something new with them, or to see what others will do. Even though I was really only a small part of this video being uploaded, I still do absolutely have a feeling of responsibility. To see all of these people react so positively to something that I helped to create, even just a little, is very… weird.
(As of 12/23/16 Turner, the company that now owns LazyTown, decided that they weren’t a fan of the stunt and requested that the video be taken off of Stefán’s account. An alternate upload has been linked below.)
The video in question
It’s a difficult feeling to explain… it’s an awkwardness of sorts, and a bit of disbelief. Well, more than a disbelief, it’s closer to a disregardation of reality. I internally make myself forget that I was responsible for it. Maybe it’s the same thing that the actual people behind LazyTown feel when people like me show interest in the show. Perhaps what I’m about to say may come off as narcissistic or delusional, but in a way, I feel like I’ve transcended the identity of “just a fan.” I started out as a fan, sure, but now I know and have met all kinds of people who worked on the product, I’ve been to the production studio, I’ve formed a huge personal investment in the idea, I’m an administrator on LazyTown’s largest fansite, I’ve created or worked on all kinds of projects, and so on. In my introduction post, I mentioned “loving” LazyTown and what that meant to me. For a long period of my LazyTenure, the love was a one way street; LazyTown became a part of me, but I was never a part of LazyTown. As time has gone on, that has slowly been changing, and I feel like in my own unique way, now there is a part of me in LazyTown. I’m really not sure what I would consider myself anymore. I guess if I was to put this relationship on facebook, I would list it as, “It’s complicated.”
It has all been a long and strange trip, from Máni’s studio in Iceland, all the way to now. It’s hard to believe that it all started with a song. The support shown for Stefán has not subsided, with the donation campaign topping $100,000 dollars, or 10 times the initial goal, at the time of this post. The memers have only just got hold of the song’s assets, so who knows what these maniacs will pump out with them. Even though this whole things has legs yet, it’s important to remember that it will someday come to an end.
As someone born and raised on the internet, and who has been around the binary block, I know that all internet memes die off. It doesn’t matter how popular or widespread they are, they always die eventually. I know that for most of the people meming it up, their feelings for LazyTown or for Stefán are fleeting and shallow, and that a year from now, they will have found something else to attach themselves too, but I am still tremendously grateful for what this collective has done, is doing, and how they have affected those of us on the edges of the phenomenon.
I am grateful that this all happened at just the right time to be more than dust in the wind; that it happened at a time to make a real, positive, and tangible impact on a family. I am grateful that Máni, Stefán, Steina, Mark, and whoever else all embraced this, and chose to ride the wave as it is passing through. I am grateful to be in a position where I can see all of this from the outside in, instead of the inside out. And I am grateful to have LazyTown be part of my life, because I can’t imagine it any other way.
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