IShowSpeed "World Cup" Song / Let's Play Football

Submission 7,239

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About

The IShowSpeed "World Cup" Song refers to a track made by streamer IShowSpeed in anticipation of the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. In the song, Speed says, Let's Play Football and then repeats "World Cup" multiple times. After the music video was released in November 2022, the song became the subject of ironic memes on TikTok, mostly due to the perceived cringe some felt regarding it. Going into 2023, TikTokers made memes using the Revive app that made dogs sing the "Let's play football" lyric, similar to the So Wake Me Up Dog and the sound Come Over Here and Kiss Me On My Hot Mouth.

Origin

On November 4th, 2022, the official YouTube^[1] channel of IShowSpeed posted the music video for his song titled, "World Cup." Over the course of two months, the video received roughly 66 million views and 2.8 million likes (shown below). In the video, he lists off many of the countries represented in the 2022 World Cup and then states, "Let's play football," before the chorus begins. He is also seen in the video doing the Speed Dance.

Spread

Over the course of 24 hours, the video gained over 4 million views as per Genius on Twitter.^[2] Other outlets on Twitter reported about the song, like a tweet^[3] posted by Dexerto on November 4th, 2022, gaining roughly 36,900 likes in two months.

Many YouTubers and streamers reacted to the song once it dropped, such as Kai Cenat who portrayed enjoyment. A video of Cenat's reaction to the song was posted by TikToker^[4] belguim.fifa on November 7th, 2022, gaining roughly 30.5 million plays and 3.6 million likes in two months (shown below, left). Around the same time, memes about the song started to surface, like one video uploaded on November 12th, 2022, by TikToker^[5] daniboy_032 that compared the song for the 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil to Speed's song, gaining roughly 22.9 million plays and 2.6 million likes in two months (shown below, right).

Throughout the 2022 FIFA World Cup in November and December 2022, many TikTokers used the song as the sound^[6] for their World Cup-related content, amassing roughly 404,500 videos using it.

Additionally, on November 7th, 2022, Speed's secondary YouTube^[7] channel, Live Speedy, posted a "Behind the Scenes" video about recording the song, showing Speed in the recording booth, and singing the song without autotune. Over the course of two months, the video received roughly 1.7 million views and 96,000 likes (shown below). Speed's lack of autotune in the video led to reposts of "Autotune vs. No Autotune" videos on TikTok.^[8]

Let's Play Football

After the 2022 FIFA World Cup finals in mid-December 2022, IShowSpeed's "World Cup" song continued to trend in memes on TikTok as creators started to specifically isolate his line, "Let's play football." On December 20th, 2022, TikToker^[9] lovely.boyfriend posted a video using the Revive app and the So Wake Me Up Dog, making it seem like the dog was singing the lyrics. Over the course of 17 days, the video received roughly 18,100 plays and 1,000 likes (shown below, left). Soon after, on December 22nd, 2022, TikToker^[10] unlimitedbounty1 posted a sped-up version of the audio with Leandro singing the lyrics, gaining roughly 820,600 plays and 67,500 likes in 15 days (shown below, right).

Going into January 2023, TikToker^[10] unlimitedbounty1's sped-up sound^[11] gained over 1,900 videos with many of them gaining thousands of plays.