Why Raffi's iconic 1994 children's song 'Bananaphone' is having a comeback as a viral TikTok meme
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Palmer Haasch
Jun 23, 2021, 22:55 IST
Raffi's "Bananaphone" is having a comeback on TikTok as part of a animal-related trend.
@queenofcaffeine/@fxnnmchxgh/TikTok
A trend on TikTok juxtaposes images of animals with the lyrics of Raffi's "Bananaphone."
The meme format appears to have originated in a 2020 Reddit post before spreading on TikTok in June.
"Bananaphone" exploded online in 2004 and has experienced sustained online popularity since.
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"Bananaphone," an iconic 1994 children's song by the singer Raffi and writer-producer Michael Creber, is having yet another meme resurgence - this time, on TikTok.
The song has a long history of resurging online, particularly on YouTube. Now, the TikTok iteration juxtaposes animals with their own banana phones.
For the uninitiated, "Bananaphone" is exactly what it says on the tin: it's a song about a banana that is also a phone. It's full of banana-related puns like, "it's a phone with a-peel!"
The current TikTok trend associated with the song uses its chorus, in which Raffi (whose real name is Raffi Cavoukian) sings, "Ring ring ring ring ring ring ring, 'bananaphone' (boop-boo-ba-doo-ba-doop)!"
Users flip a still image of an animal - typically a pet, but sometimes a stuffed animal - back and forth to the rhythm of those lyrics. When Raffi sings "bananaphone," an image of a banana appears as the animal's phone.
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When the "boop-boo-ba-doo-ba-doop" moment hits, TikTok videos following the trend cut to a video of the animal doing something funny.
This 'Bananaphone' meme rendition appeared on Reddit first
This particular version of the trend doesn't appear to have actually started on TikTok, but can be traced back to a Reddit post made by u/haiiid2 on the r/okbuddyretard subreddit, a Reddit meme page with over 913,000 subscribers. In 2020, that user posted a video edit with the same format that TikTok users are following now.
Around June 15, the trend began to pick up stream in more mainstream TikTok communities, with people using images of real animals rather than anime or gaming characters.
While TikTok's "Bananaphone" trend is relatively simple, it demonstrates how a '90s children's song remains one of the longest-running meme anthems in online culture.
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