Cooking by the Book

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About

"Cooking by the Book" is a song featured in a 2004 episode of the Icelandic children's show LazyTown. The song gained considerable notoriety online after being mashed-up with a Lil Jon song in 2008, inspiring further video edits and parodies. This is one of the many songs from LazyTown to be the subject of memes, following "You are a Pirate's" viral success in 2006.

Origin

On August 20th, 2004, Season 1 Episode 6 of the children's show LazyTown premiered in North America, which included a music video for an original song about following directions while cooking and eating right called "Cooking by the Book" (shown below).^[1]

The song gained a considerable fanbase over the next four years, resulting in numerous YTMND^[5] pages consisting of loops of the song over various images throughout 2006 and 2007, including a remix made for a YTMND^[3] competition that gained over 10,000 views and one featuring an echoed loop of the song over a photoshopped image of jihadist Abū Muṣʻab Zarqāwī that garnered over 70,000 views in roughly 15 years.^[4]

On October 1st, 2008, YouTuber HatPerson uploaded a remixed version of the music video featuring a mashup of "Cooking by the Book" with Lil Jon's part from his 2004 Snoop Dogg collaboration "Step Yo Game Up,"^[2] titled the "'Cooking by the Book' A Lil' Bigger Mix" (shown below). The video went viral, gaining over 10 million views in 12 years.

Spread

The remix inspired a number of other remixes and parodies over the following years (examples of each shown below, left and right respectively).

The lyrics to "Cooking by the Book" also became a mildly popular copypasta on 4chan,^[10]^[11] starting as early as 2009 (examples shown below). The remix was also used in a bait-and-switch prank in the same vein as Rickrolling called getting "cakeroll'd," where one user was tricked into clicking on the remix video.^[6]

On October 4th, 2010, YouTuber^[7] emt1287 reuploaded the remix, garnering over 40 million views and becoming the most viewed version of the video 11 years later.

On November 15th, 2016, YouTuber^[8] Just Snowy uploaded an edit of "Cooking by the Book" that gets bass boosted whenever "cake" is said, garnering over 3.8 million views in four years (shown below, left). On February 13th, 2017, YouTuber^[9] TwinkieMan uploaded a video splicing audio and video footage of Donald Trump together with the music video, garnering over 3 million views in four years (shown below, right).

On April 7th, 2020, Chole Lang, the actress who portrays Stephanie Meanswell in Lazytown, posted a video to TikTok^[12] set to the Lil Jon remix, garnering over 2 million views in a year (shown below).