Caroline Polachek

About

Caroline Polachek is an American singer, songwriter, musician and recording artist. Her work, both music and music videos, have been referenced in numerous memes, including Cultural Reset and RIP Harambe.

Online History

Caroline Polachek began her career in the indie pop band Chairlift, a project that consisted of her, Patrick Wimberly, and Aaron Pfenning. The band released their debut album Does You Inspire You in 2008. On October 25th, 2009, the band released the video for the single "Bruises." Within 10 years, the video received more than 3.3 million views (shown below, left). As a group, they would release two more studio albums in 2012 and 2016 before their breakup in 2017.

On October 2nd, 2019, Polachek released the video for her song "So Hot You're Hurting My Feelings" from her first album under her own name Pang that was released a few weeks later on October 18th. Within one year, the video received more than 5.5 million views (shown below, right).

The following year, Twitter user @pollutant edited Polachek into the STFU I'm Listening To. Within one week, the post received more than 1.9 million views, 55,000 likes and 11,000 retweets (shown below).

Related Memes

RIP Harambe

RIP Harambe refers to a rap song released and presumably performed by American entrepreneur Elon Musk under a fake label Emo G Records on Soundcloud on March 30th, 2019. The song is dedicated to Harambe the Gorilla, who became a popular internet meme after being shot dead on May 28th, 2016, in Cincinnati Zoo.

Two tweets posted by Elon Musk and musician-producer BloodPop on March 31st suggested that the song was produced by the musician and co-written by Caroline Polachek and emoji artist Yung Jake.

Cultural Reset

Cultural Reset is a phrase common on Twitter referring to a moment in music film and pop-culture that changed the genre or all of society in some way. The phrase is used both ironically and sincerely mostly by stan accounts tweeting about their favorite artists.

On October 26th, 2019, Twitter user @thegoodwar posted a clip of Caroline Polachek’s "So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings" with the caption, "it was a cultural reset… it was a cultural reset" (shown below). The tweet gained over 19,400 likes and 3,600 retweets in four months.

Search Interest