The Weirdos Living Inside Our Phones
Brian Jordan Alvarez’s ode to sitting makes him the latest comedian to wring ineffable joy out of a very viral, very silly song.
We’ve just lived through what Vulture has labeled “Silly Song Summer,” during which onomatopoeias (Kylie Minogue’s “Padam Padam”), farcical film ballads (Barbie’s “I’m Just Ken,” The Super Mario Bros. Movie’s “Peaches”), and a Eurodance satire (Kyle Gordon a.k.a. D.J. Crazy Times’s “Planet of the Bass”) went viral. Novelty songs—fluky, hummable jokes—are nothing new, but TikTok has accelerated their production, and broadly, the cultural mood is trending toward cheesiness and wit.
The latest and greatest example is “Sitting,” by TJ, but you won’t be able to get its melody out of your head or forget the natural law it reveals: “Sitting is the opposite of standing / Sitting is the opposite of running around.”
