“Chocolate Rain”
“Chocolate Rain” was a music video
created on April 22, 2007 by Tay Zonday. This song and video depicts Zonday with
his glasses singing the song he created into a condenser microphone. This video
instantly became popular and up until recently (Feb. 2013), has acquired over
88 million views. In the year it came out, it was named “the hottest viral
video of 2007”, as well as the 2007 YouTube award in the music category. Although it definitely peaked in the year that
it premiered and is not as popular today, it still is a video that is widely
known and is still referenced frequently. (Link to Google insights chart[s]
below shows progression and peak) This video is known for Zonday’s strange but
entertaining and deep voice and the reappearing caption that says “*I move away from the mic to breathe in.” Tay
claimed that his intent when writing this song was meant to represent
institutional racism.
This song has been remixed and
parodied in several different instances. It caught the attention of the world
and was soon reproduced all over the Internet with different celebrities. This
fame lead Tay to appear on numerous television shows, interviews, commercials
and performances. This included a remix with John Mayer, a parody on South
Park, a commercial to promote Cherry Chocolate Dr. Pepper, an appearance on
Jimmy Kimmel, and many many more. On July 11th, 2007, Chocolate Rain
was noticed by Anonymous; Zonday immediately responded to this audience by
performing another hit and then coined the term “The Tay Roll”. Fifteen days
later, Chocolate Rain made the front of the YouTube page, which only furthered
the video’s fame and soon after, 4chan featured this video all over their
website to appreciate the producer and song and even included their own remix.
This video made Zonday very famous to the public eye and even landed him some
work as an actor to do voiceovers and even hired by NASA to do promote “50
Years of NASA”.
I think that there are various
reasons why this meme became popular. The deep voice immediately catches your
attention and you can’t help but keep watching because Zonday has this
undeniably nerdy, but entertaining charm. The tune is catchy and is bound to
get stuck in your head. Moreover, Tay appears as a normal every-day guy that
most people can relate to and appeals to a wide range of audiences. This video
was sent to me several times when it first emerged and I know that I couldn’t
help but watch it repeatedly, which lead me to search it on Google and watch
all of the remixes and parodies as well.
Below is a list of links to parodies & remixes!
Here is the link to the original video:
Here is a link to a parody including John Mayer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKrrHe3Fkt4
Here is a link to a parody called “Vanilla Snow”:
Here is a link to a parody by Chad Vader:
Here is a link to a parody done by South Park (0:24)
Here is a link to the Google Insights charts that shows the
time frame of this video’s popularity
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