It’s February 26, 2011. You are a middle schooler enjoying a calm day watching Saturday morning cartoons. As your favorite TV show ends, you pull out the family iPad and go to YouTube to see if your favorite creators have uploaded anything new. You notice a video from CaptainSparklez titled, “‘TNT’ – A Minecraft Parody of Taio Cruz’s Dynamite (Music Video).” A smile lights up across your face as the clip starts and you see Minecraft Steve walking across a grassland while the voice of YouTuber TryHardNinja sings the opening lines, “I came to dig, dig, dig, dig.”
Minecraft is one of the most critically acclaimed and best-selling video games of all time, with over 238 million copies sold and an average of 2.5 to 3.6 million concurrent players. Though the sandbox game is over a decade old, its hold on the hearts of players remains strong. Fans have gone far beyond the block-filled 3D world and created a substantial amount of mods, fan art, and, most notably, parodies to showcase their passion for the game. Musical covers of popular songs that have been remixed by fans to be about killing zombies or mining for resources have populated the internet since 2009, and have continued to be some of the most notable pieces of Minecraft content online.
“TNT” is one of the oldest and most iconic Minecraft parodies to exist. Its virality launched creator CaptainSparklez’s Minecraft music career and inspired dozens (if not hundreds) of other YouTubers to create their own Minecraft remixes. While Jordan Maron is still active on the CaptainSparklez YouTube channel, with multiple videos released weekly, his parodies from the early to mid 2010s remain his most-viewed videos. Between the dozen or so tracks he’s released, he’s amassed hundreds of millions of views. Many of the parodies even compete in view count with the original songs that inspired them.
In the digital age, it’s become commonplace to express love for a piece of media by creating your own content about it. Whether it be a fancam or fanart of a favorite character, a video essay detailing the themes and ideas of a movie or game, a funny meme referencing a plot point, or a fanfic that allows someone to tell their own story within a fictional world, online creators prove their dedication to particular fandoms by creating works that often go viral. However, it isn’t often that musical content is at the forefront of memes, viral trends, and creative fandom content. It’s not like people are rushing to make a remix of Lil Nas X’s “Industry Baby” as part of their hype for the new Batman movie (as much as I would love to see that).
Minecraft is unique in that it’s the first major piece of media that inspired parodies in the 2010s, which in turn inspired other creators to make parodies of other popular games, movies, and TV shows. One example of this is the YouTube Channel Instalok, which makes League of Legends parodies of popular songs. The oldest video on their channel, released in 2013, and is a parody of PSY’s song “Gentleman.” Other artists have even made completely original, non-parodic songs to show their hype for a game. The song “Join Us For a Bite” by JT Music is one such example — it’s inspired by the horror game Five Nights at Freddy’s and has gone viral on TikTok as a popular sound.
The explanation as to why Minecraft has lended itself so well to musical memes varies. One reason might be the fact that it already has a beloved soundtrack. While taking a popular song off the Billboard Top 200 and converting its lyrics to be about finding diamonds has garnered major success, many sample beats, remixes, and flips of tracks off of Minecraft’s original soundtrack have also been met with love and attention.
Minecraft’s younger demographic also significantly contributes to the success of parodies. One study from The Conversation found that “53 percent of children aged six to eight, and 68 percent of children aged nine to 12, are actively playing Minecraft.” Young kids have an immense love for both the sandbox title and watching video game content creators on YouTube. It’s almost certain that many of the views that Minecraft parodies have accumulated come from children who obsessively play these tracks on repeat. (At the very least, that’s what I was doing in 2011.)
Sometimes kids will make viral Minecraft parodies themselves, which often adds to the appeal of a remix. YouTuber Leviathan, known for his Fortnite remix of Estelle’s “American Boy” titled “Chug Jug With You,” acknowledged in an interview that many people liked his parody because it sounded like a kid was singing it. With Fortnite and Minecraft both being popular with children and inspiring multiple viral parody songs, it’s clear that the youthfulness of a game’s audience factors into how popular parodies become.
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While it’s hard to credit just one creator or song with popularizing Minecraft parodies, it would be impossible to detail the history of Minecraft remixes without acknowledging the iconography of CaptainSparklez’s “Revenge,” the awe-inspiring parody of Usher’s “DJ Got Us Falling in Love Again.” The video was uploaded to YouTube on August 11, 2011, and quickly became one of the most memorable parodies to exist. With over 270 million views, it is the most popular Minecraft parody on YouTube and the most viewed Minecraft video of all time. The parody is so iconic that it even earned its own parody, with a Lego recreation of the music video being uploaded to YouTube in 2015 by the channel TheSupermoviestudios™.
For over a decade now, content creators have been expressing their love for Minecraft by redoing any song they can get their hands on. The success of parodies that spanned across every piece of popular culture in the 2010s wouldn’t exist today without the success of Minecraft parodies. Famous creators such as The Yogscast, Galaxy Goats, Sky Does Everything, and many more have amassed millions of views with their parodies, often having them be the most popular videos on their respective channels.Whether it be about finding diamonds, falling in lava, or running from a creeper, these parodies manage to showcase the passion of the Minecraft community in ways no other meme format or viral trend can.
