WAPO: Listen to the most cringe music ever made

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WAPO: Listen to the most cringe music ever made

« on: October 15, 2024, 03:42:35 AM »

Listen to the most cringe music ever made

Or maybe technology-themed songs like a “Hamilton”-inspired musical about software are so earnest that they’re great?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/10/11/cringe-technology-songs-microsoft-google-ethereum/

Combine the antidrug skits you watched in middle school with dollops of oddball airline safety videos and late-night TV commercial jingles.

What you get is a peculiarly Silicon Valley genre: songs created to promote a technology product or company. These tunes are often cringe, or possibly good, or maybe so dorky and earnest that they’re great.

Tech companies have been making self-referential music forever, but social media and the attention on technology have made the spotlight brighter — and their affluence has made the productions more over the top.

Have a listen for yourself.

Behold, I give you a hip-hop track about OneDrive, the Microsoft cloud file cabinet that you might be forced to use at work.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/8/24265421/microsoft-made-a-song-about-onedrive

Sample lyric: “Listen up y’all/I got a story to tell/about a cloud that got some mad skills to sell.”

This spring, the start-up Canva performed a seemingly “Hamilton”-inspired musical theater number. Onstage, a cool Canva worker clapped back at a stuffy corporate executive who is reluctant to buy the company’s graphic design software.

Sample lyric: “We don’t train on your work/without your permission/safe and securrrrrr/if that is what you’re wishin’.”

The online reaction to the performance was bananas — mostly in a not-so-good way.

“If cringe was a war, this would be a nuclear weapon,” reads one of more than 2,200 replies to an X post about the Canva performance. Other people loved it.

Canva said the musical number generated a lot of attention, social media mentions and Google searches for the Australian start-up. “While not everyone was a fan, this was a risk that ultimately paid off,” a Canva spokesperson said.

Canva corporate 'Hamilton' cringe rap presentation goes viral

There’s also a flourishing genre of enthusiastic cryptocurrency-themed songs. At a 2019 conference, Vitalik Buterin, the influential executive behind the Ethereum crypto network and the digital currency Ether (known by the symbol “ETH”), awkwardly participated in a self-referential song.

Sample lyric: “ETH 2.0, yo/ETH 2.0, yo/ETH 2.0, yo/ETH 2.0, yo.” (Those are the best lyrics in there.)

Ethereum declined to comment.

And my longtime personal favorite is a 2010 music video in which online shopping site Woot used a rapping stuffed monkey toy to announce that Amazon had bought the company. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

Sample lyric: “You can labor every day until you’re tired and old/or wait for Amazon to call and when they do you say, ‘SOLD.’”

We Got Acquired By Amazon

Many organizations (or their HR departments) create well-meaning but sometimes ill-advised musical numbers. What’s perhaps unique about the technology-themed ditty is the industry’s embrace of its geek chic to dream up tunes in which the nerds are in on the joke. I think.

Other examples:

🧐 A rainbow-robed electronic musician started a Google developers gathering in May with a manic performance that defied explanation.

https://x.com/benjitaylor/status/1790425707962880024

Sample lyric: “Don’t worry, baby, Google’s going to wake you right up/Google’s going to come into bed and wake you right up.”

https://twitter.com/i/status/1790425707962880024

🤓 The start-up investment firm First Round Capital for years staged elaborate holiday music videos packed with insider references to Silicon Valley and start-up finance.

First Round Capital Holiday Video 2012 - Call Me First Round Style

Round Capital's Holiday Video 2013: What Does the Unicorn Say?

First Round Holiday Parody Video 2016: Just be a Founder

First Round 2014 Holiday Parody Video - All About Burn Rate

Sample lyric, based on the Pharrell Williams hit: “Because we’re scrappy/Clap along on the path to product-market fit.”

Pharrell Williams - Happy (Video)

🫣 There’s a music video about the inventor of techie favorite software Linux in the style of Eminem, “Will the Real Linus Torvalds Please Stand Up?” (The Linux Foundation says the ad was a twist on a real IBM advertisement and was a spoof of a blog parody of Steve Jobs.)

Will the Real Linus Torvalds Please Stand Up?

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/06/technology/06steve.html

😬 Blackberry executives once performed a tweaked cover of an REO Speedwagon love song to persuade app developers to stick with the precursor to the iPhone. Alas, app developers and phone buyers continued to jilt Blackberry.

Celluloco.com Presents: Devs, BlackBerry Is Going To Continue Loving You - Thanks to BB10!

😰 There are songs and memes inspired by then-Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s sweaty onstage exhortations about “developers, developers, developers, developers!” from 2000. Ballmer also featured in the incredible scene of Microsoft executives dork-dancing to a Rolling Stones song.

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/steve-ballmer-monkey-dance

Steve Ballmer at .NET presentation: Developers (HQ, Extended)