Weezer Pork and Beans Meme

You know when you hear a song and don’t know the words so you make up some lyrics in your head to sing along to? Well it turns out the lyrics of Weezer’s new song Pork and Beans are just that, “I eat my candy with my pork and beans.” So yeah, I’m not crazy.

With that I’ll back up a little and first introduce the concept of memes and then explain why the heck Weezer is going to get total geek cred for their single’s music video.

A meme consists of any unit of cultural information, such as a practice or idea, that gets transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another. Examples include thoughts, ideas, theories, practices, habits, songs, dances and moods and terms such as race, culture, and ethnicity. Memes propagate themselves and can move through a “culture” in a manner similar to the behavior of a virus. As a unit of cultural evolution, a meme in some ways resembles a gene [wiki] Note: A meme does not have to be a video.

MemeLabs here in Vancouver had a list of the top memes of 2007 and asked for your favourites. It featured such gems as Dramatic Prairie Dog, Leave Britney Alone, Chocolate Rain, and the Prison Yard Thriller video.

Weezer decided to compile all of these memes including the “Diet Coke and Mentos Experiment” for their latest video:

I remember when Weird Al’s “White and Nerdy” came out it was tops on YouTube charts with all the geeky fan boys and girls loving references like, “I edit wikipedia.” This single was also Weird Al’s first single on the Top 10 Billboard charts.

I have a feeling the Weezer meme is going to make quite a splash. Even with an iTunes-only release in the USA last year our pal Matthew Good’s album Hospital Music was on Top 10 charts as well. The lesson here? Embrace the power of the internets.

I know that’s a big statement, but I’ll simply leave it at that and allow you to watch the video and get the Pork and Beans tune stuck in your head as it has been in mine for about six days now.