Soldiers Begin Singing Version Of Popular Song And Internet Loses It Over Their Dance Moves

Sep 21, 2021 by apost team

In many ways, internet memes dominated the 2010s. There was the planking craze, Rebecca Black's "Friday," the Harlem Shake and Psy's "Gangnam Style." However, one of the most popular videos from that era is this 2013 "Call Me Maybe" parody from a group of U.S. Marines stationed in Afghanistan. The soldiers gave their own (topless) spin on the song, parodying an earlier lip-dub put out by the Miami Dolphins cheerleading team.

Before you watch the video parody below, you have to understand how this meme came about. After Carly Rae Jepsen's chart-topping "Call Me Maybe" and the accompanying music video hit YouTube in 2012, users from around the world began to videotape tributes and parodies of the video.

apost.com

Among the most popular video spoofs was the Miami Dolphins cheer team's lip-dub, which quickly accumulated millions of views since its upload in August 2012. Far from just an amateur video, the cheer team recorded and edited a fairly elaborate video that saw the bikini-clad team lip-syncing underwater, in ball pits, at the beach and in the ocean. 

According to the original video's description, which has since been removed from the website, the cheerleading crew was in the Dominican Republic for a photo shoot when the team decided to film the lib dub parody, which explains the tropical scenery in the videos.

A couple of months later in November 2012, a group of soldiers stationed in Afghanistan joined in on the "Call Me Maybe" craze, releasing their own parody (or tribute) of the cheerleaders' video. And as you can imagine, the results provoked quite a response on YouTube.

The soldiers, who opted to go shirtless rather than wearing bikinis, created a frame-by-frame parody of the cheerleaders’ hit video, copying everything from hand gestures to the camerawork. Of course, the soldiers couldn’t match the original video’s scenery, but they made do by filming in the showers around their military base, in the sands of Afghanistan’s desert and in military fatigues. The soldiers even nailed some of the more PG-13 shots, seemingly unafraid to shake their booties for the camera.

And despite the many discrepancies, which may make the video even funnier, a side-by-side comparison of the videos shows that this group of marines nailed their lighthearted tribute. Unfortunately, the video has been removed and reuploaded so many times that it’s hard to track down the original to see how many views it has accumulated, but it’s safe to say that millions upon millions have watched the spoof — so much so that it’s become a bit of an internet classic, attracting attention from outlets like The Guardian and the Daily Mail.

“These guys are a million times better than the cheerleaders......fantastic!” one YouTuber commented on the upload below.

Another user, who took a more serious tone, wrote, “It is great to see that throughout all this strife, you all can have a sense of humor. I can never thank the men and women who put themselves in harm's way to secure our freedom and liberties. US troops saved my parents' lives during WWII. I am forever indebted to our US Military.”

It turns out that this isn’t the only military lib dub of Jepsen’s hit song. In another notable cover, which ABC News reported on in July 2012, a group of soldiers at the Kandahar Airfield in Afghanistan were busting moves to “Call Me Maybe” in the air hanger. Eric Raum, who was an employee at United Service Organizations (USO) at the time, came up with the idea to boost troops’ morale. Teaming up with friend and co-worker Randy Moresi, the two also proposed the lib dub to show a different, more lighthearted side of the military.

"It's a side of the military that you don't get to see," Raum told ABC News back in July of 2012. "Showing the human side on the other side of the rifles is a great opportunity."

Moresi, who was once a cheerleader, helped to choreograph the video while Raum filmed the crew as they lip-synced and danced along to the Canadian pop star’s track. Due to time constraints, the pair only had one hour to work with each group of soldiers before they had to move on, according to ABC News. And while you might think it would be hard to motivate a group of soldiers to dance to “Call Me Maybe” — even for just an hour — Raum and Moresi told ABC News that the soldiers were relatively enthusiastic and compliant. 

"They said, 'If our sergeant says we're going to dance, teach us the moves, we're going to dance,’” Raum told the news outlet.

All of this poses a question, however. How did a pop song with the chorus, “Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy / But here's my number, so call me maybe,” spread all the way to Afghanistan? And what inspired all these different kinds of people to lip-sync the song and upload it for the world to see?

Know Your Meme, a website that documents and traces the origin of internet trends, explains that the song first rose to popularity thanks to a Justin Bieber Tweet.

The pop star wrote that Jepsen’s track is “possibly the catchiest song ever” two months after the song’s release in September 2011. But it wasn’t until Feb. 18, 2012, that lip-dubs of Jepsen’s track began to spread like wildfire across the internet, according to Know Your Meme. That date, the website explains, marks the day Selena Gomez, Ashley Tisdale and Justin Bieber uploaded a lib dub of the Jepsen song, which quickly became an internet sensation.

From then on, media outlets from The New York Times to Gawker covered “Call Me Maybe” with headlines like “Have You Heard 'Call Me Maybe,' the New Perfect Pop Song?,”  leading to a frenzy of media exposure and YouTube covers of the pop hit. Know Your Meme reports that in April 2012, there were 22,500 YouTube search results for the song’s title.

Today, we can revisit the track with feelings of nostalgia, remembering and thinking back to one of the internet’s most lighthearted and fun chapters in the past ten years.

What do you think of the soldiers’ “Call Me Maybe” parody? Does it live up to the cheerleaders’ version and the original? Let us know — and don’t forget to pass this fun video and story on to friends, family members and fellow music fans.