Lulu and the Lampshades Cups Covers / Cup Song

Submission 38,756

About

Lulu and the Lampshades Cups Covers are videos in which the subject performs a cover of the song "You're Gonna Miss Me" by the band Lulu and the Lampshades using a plastic cup to create a beat.

Origin

YouTuber TheShelteredLife uploaded a video titled "Tutorial: Hot do do the Cup Beat/Clap" on January 27th, 2008, which demonstrated how to use a plastic cup to perform a beat (shown below).

On June 8th, 2009, YouTuber Lulapinga uploaded a video in which Lulu and the Lampshades members Luisa and Jemma perform an adaptation of the 1937 song "Miss Me When I'm Gone" by Mainer's Mountaineers^[2] hitting two plastic cups on a table to create a beat (shown below). As of November 21st, 2012, the video has accumulated over 1.67 million views.

Spread

The Lulapinga video remained relatively unknown until October 7th, 2009, when it was submitted by Redditor Gargae_Dragon in a post titled "Two Girls, Two Cups."^[1] Prior to being archived, the post received over 160 up votes and 45 comments. On June 8th, 2011, YouTuber Anna Burden uploaded a video titled "You're Gonna Miss Me (Cups)," in which she mimicked the original Lulu and the Lampshades video (shown below). In the next 17 months the video received over 2.37 million views and 5,700 comments.

On July 7th, Redditor MoonDaddy submitted the Anna Burden video titled "I think I love her" to the /r/videos^[3] subreddit, receiving over 11,950 up votes and 1000 comments prior to being archived. The same day, The Huffington Post^[7] published an article titled "Amazing 'Cups (You're Going to Miss Me)' Covers," which featured several different YouTube covers of the song. On July 8th, Burden created a Facebook^[5] fan page for herself, which accumulated over 6,400 likes in the next year. On September 28th, 2012, Redditor evilpeanut reposted the video to the /r/videos^[4] subreddit, receiving over 4,800 up votes and 300 comments within the next six weeks. The videos saw renewed interest in October 2012 after being featured in a scene in the teen comedy Pitch Perfect (shown below, right). On October 4th, actress Anna Kendrick reenacted her scene from the film on The Late Show With David Letterman (shown below, left). On November 20th, Redditor funshei submitted a video of the performance to the /r/videos^[6] subreddit, receiving over 13,200 up votes and 1,200 comments within 24 hours.