Meme Songs Everyone Knows and How to Play Them on Piano
Some songs stop being songs. They turn into punchlines, prank links and the background music of a million short videos. Play two seconds of one in a crowded room and half the people there will grin. Those are meme songs.
Below are the ones almost everyone online knows, why each became a joke, and a simple way to pick out tunes like these on a piano or keyboard, even if you have never had a lesson.
What makes a meme song
A hit song and a meme song are not the same thing. Plenty of number-one hits never became memes, and some meme songs were barely known before the internet found them. Most of them share a few traits:
- You know it in one second. The first note, sound or beat is so distinctive that a tiny clip is enough.
- It loops well. A short hook can repeat for fifteen seconds without getting old, or gets funnier the more it repeats.
- It has a joke attached. The song is tied to a prank, a video or a situation, and hearing it brings the whole joke back.
- It clashes with the picture. A dramatic song over something tiny, or a cheerful one over a disaster. The mismatch is the joke.
Meme songs everyone knows
You do not need to have seen the original video to recognize most of these, which is exactly what makes them memes.
| Song | Origin | Why it became a meme |
|---|---|---|
| Never Gonna Give You Up | Rick Astley, 1987 | The Rickroll. Since about 2007, people send a link that promises one thing and opens this music video instead. |
| Sandstorm | Darude, 1999 | It became the joke answer to every "what song is this?" question, whatever song was being asked about. |
| All Star | Smash Mouth, 1999 | It plays at the start of Shrek, and the internet has remixed and mashed it up ever since. |
| Astronomia | Tony Igy, 2010, remixed by Vicetone | The "coffin dance". In 2020, clips of dancing pallbearers from Ghana were added to the end of fail videos. |
| Crab Rave | Noisestorm, 2018 | A video of dancing computer-made crabs became the soundtrack for celebrating that something is gone. |
| Megalovania | Toby Fox, Undertale, 2015 | A boss theme from an indie game that fans sneak into remixes, covers and other games. |
| Gangnam Style | PSY, 2012 | The horse-riding dance. It was the first YouTube video to pass one billion views. |
| Running in the 90s | Max Coveri | Fast Eurobeat from the Initial D anime, now put under any clip of something sliding sideways around a corner. |
| Korobeiniki | Russian folk song, 1800s | Better known as the Tetris theme. People who have never played Tetris can still hum it. |
Why your ears remember them
Most of these songs are built on a hook of four to eight notes that comes back over and over. Memes run on repetition, and a short repeated idea is easy to remember and easy to hum back. That is also why guessing a meme from a small piece of its sound is so much fun. Hear the Meme is built on that feeling: one meme tune a day that starts with only the bass line.
How to play meme songs on piano
You do not need sheet music. This is how a pianist picks a tune up by ear.
1. Find the melody, one note at a time
- Hum the tune and press keys until one matches your first note. Ten tries is normal.
- For each next note, ask: higher, lower or the same? A small step to the next key, or a jump?
- Write the notes down as letters as you find them.
- Learn the tune in chunks of four to six notes, then join the chunks.
If a tune keeps landing on black keys, start it on a different note. Any melody can be moved up or down, and many hooks sit nicely on the white keys when you start on A or C.
2. Split the job between your hands
The simplest split is the one most pop arrangements use: the right hand plays the melody and the left hand plays one low note per bar. That low note is usually the name of the chord, called the root. Once that feels easy, let the left hand play the whole chord, or alternate a low note with a chord for a bouncy sound.
3. Learn the four-chord loop
A huge number of pop songs, including plenty of meme hits, repeat the same four chords from start to finish. In the key of C they are:
| Chord | Notes | How it sounds |
|---|---|---|
| C major | C, E, G | home, bright |
| G major | G, B, D | moving forward |
| A minor | A, C, E | a little sad |
| F major | F, A, C | warm, open |
Play them in that order, one per bar, and loop. Then start on A minor instead (A minor, F, C, G) for the darker order that sits under a lot of dramatic and dance tracks. Hum a melody you know over either loop and listen for where the chord needs to change.
4. Go slow, then speed up
Meme songs are often fast, and fast is where beginners trip. Play at half speed until you can get through the hook three times without a mistake, then go a little faster. If one spot keeps going wrong, practice only those few notes, then put them back in.
A beginner example: the Tetris theme
Korobeiniki, the Tetris tune, is a 19th-century folk song, so anyone can play it freely. It also makes a great first piece because the whole first phrase fits under one hand without moving.
Put your right thumb on the A above middle C and rest one finger on each white key up to E: thumb on A, then B, C, D, and E under your little finger. Notes written as a pair are quick ones, twice as fast as the others.
| Bar | Right hand | Fingers | Left hand |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | E, B C, D, C B | 5, 2 3, 4, 3 2 | low E |
| 2 | A, A C, E, D C | 1, 1 3, 5, 4 3 | low A |
| 3 | B (long), C, D, E | 2, 3, 4, 5 | low E |
| 4 | C, A, A (long) | 3, 1, 1 | low A |
Play it slowly and you will hear the tune by the second bar. Once the right hand is steady, add the left hand note at the start of each bar. That is a real two-hand arrangement.
Easy tunes to try next
These public domain tunes are just as recognizable and just as friendly to beginners:
- Ode to Joy (Beethoven). Almost all steps and no big jumps.
- Für Elise (Beethoven). The opening rocks between two neighboring notes, then runs down.
- The Can-Can (Offenbach). Fast and silly, the classic sound of chaos breaking out.
- In the Hall of the Mountain King (Grieg). It starts slow and sneaky, then speeds up.
Save fast ones like Megalovania for later, and start them with the melody alone.
Play meme songs in games
Music shows up in a lot of games on kekplay, and a few of them make good ear training before you sit down at a keyboard.
Hear the Meme is a daily guess the meme by sound game, with one tune a day, the same for everyone. You hear the bass first, then a pet band adds the beat, the chords, the rhythm of the melody, the melody itself and finally the full piano arrangement. You have six tries. Guess it and the Encore lets you tap along and play that tune yourself while the band follows you.
In Hum the Meme you hum into the microphone and Mochi the cat plays the exact note you hit on his grand piano. Its 24 tunes include Ode to Joy, Für Elise and the Can-Can, and without a microphone you can play them on a touch piano or your keyboard. Chord Sort is a ball sort puzzle where every full tube plays a chord and every level hides a famous tune. More are on the music games page.
