If You Dance I'll Dance

Submission 804

Part of a series on Lana Del Rey. [View Related Entries]

About

If You Dance I'll Dance, continued And If You Don't I'll Dance Anyway, refers to lyrics from the song "Yes To Heaven" by Lana Del Rey, which became a TikTok meme and trend in mid-2024 in which video creators showed two characters (oftentimes animals) dancing to the song.

Origin

On May 19th, 2023, Lana Del Rey released the single "Yes To Heaven," leading with the lyrics, "If you dance, I'll dance. And if you don't I'll dance anyway."^[1] On that day, the song's audio was published to YouTube,^[2] amassing over 51.5 million views and 826,000 likes in a year (shown below).

On July 28th, 2024, TikToker^[3] @pinksun.oficial posted a video showing MrBeast dancing akin to the MrBeast Rizz trend, set to Lana Del Rey's "Yes To Heaven." The video received over 10.4 million plays and 1.7 million likes in 16 days (shown below). It is currently the first known meme of the trend.

Spread

On July 30th, 2024, TikToker^[4] @sheritavz posted an iteration with cats, using the Spinning Cat meme. Over two weeks, it received roughly 7.9 million plays and 1.7 million likes (shown below, left).

Going into August 2024, TikTokers began using the TikTok sounds^[5]^[6] of both aforementioned videos for their content. For instance, on August 4th, TikToker^[7] @largerandomsalt posted an iteration with a dancing hedgehog, gaining over 7.2 million plays and 1 million likes in nine days (shown below, right).

The iterations continued to reference other memes going into August 2024. For instance, on August 4th, TikToker^[8] @sryam77 posted a version with the Oh Yeah Woo Yeah stick figure, receiving over 3 million plays and 113,800 likes in nine days (shown below).

By August 13th, 2024, the trend's two primary TikTok sounds^[5]^[6] had amassed over 2,200 posts and 18,000 posts, respectively.