Listens Once

Submission 48,540

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About

Listens Once refers to a joke format in which people post photographs illustrating the drastic transformation that occurs when a person listens to a certain musical artist or song one time, often using the phrasal template "listen to X once."

Origin

The origin of the phrase "Listen to (Blank) Once" is unclear. While variations had appeared prior, the earliest known "Listen to (Blank) Once" was posted on June 2nd, 2014 in a thread on music community site ATRL.^[1] User OnikaSlays posted "Listens to 'Blue' once" ("Blue" being a song by Beyoncé about her daughter, Blue Ivy) with a picture of "Kim Kardashian":** holding her son, North West. The thread failed to generate interest.

Precursor

Variations on the joke had been popular beforehand, particularly in reference to Lana Del Rey. On August 14th, 2015, Buzzfeed^[2] published an article compiling jokes people had made illustrating transformations supposedly undergone after listening to the singer. The earliest one cited in the article was posted on February 19th, 2014 by Twitter user @S4DB4RBIE,^[3] who posted two pictures of Ashley Tisdale, one of her in casual teen clothing and another of her in a long black dress, to demonstrate the transformation (shown below).

Spread

On June 29th, 2014, RapGenius (now Genius)^[4] user Joseph Ikodo posted a thread similar to the one posted to ATRL, inviting the community to make jokes specific to rappers. It also did not generate many responses. However, the summer of 2014 did see an uptick in "Listens to (Blank) Once" memes, with many referring to Lana Del Rey. On October 15th, 2014, popular Twitter account @CommonGayBoy^[5] tweeted the joke with a picture of a gay man saying "Lets all get daddies" (shown below).

The inundation of "Listens to Lana Del Rey once" jokes led Redditor Caleb_Perkins^[6] to pose a question asking about them to /r/OutOftheLoop on March 28th, 2016. In 2015 and 2016, the joke continued growing popular as people inserted various other musical artists.

In late 2016, the joke experienced a surge following a tweet by @Joshwoos^[7] in which he posted pictures of a happy-looking dog leaving his cage and captioned them "Listens to Mr. Brightside once," referring to The Killers' song's opening lyrics, "Coming out of my cage, and I've been doin' just fine." The tweet, shown below, was posted on November 29th and has over 59,000 retweets and 127,000 favorites as of December 2nd, 2016. The tweet led to some imitators which were covered by The Daily Dot.^[8]

Listens to Mac DeMarco Once

One of the most popular artists associated with the snowclone is indie rock singer Mac DeMarco. Because DeMarco's signature aesthetic involves cigarettes and an unkept, dirty appearance, "Listens to Mac DeMarco Once" jokes tend to show people with a comical amount of cigarettes or an overtly dirty appearance. On July 29th, 2015, Tumblr user Sadurdaze^[9] posted the joke with pictures of a woman whose wig and sandals were made out of cigarettes, gaining over 3,300 notes (shown below).

Various iterations of the joke appeared on social media as DeMarco remained in the public eye. With the release of his album This Old Dog in May of 2017, the joke resurfaced to the point where both Spin^[10] and Daily Dot^[11] covered it.