Gretchen

About

Maria Odete Brito de Miranda de Souza, better known as Gretchen, is a Brazilian singer, dancer, businesswoman and media personality that is considered the "Queen of Memes" in Brazil. She is best known for her vast musical repertoire from the '70s and '80s. She appears in many memes about her appearances on television and mainstream music videos, as well as memes created by the LGBTQIA+ community.

History

Gretchen^[1] is a Brazilian singer who sold more than 15 million records worldwide^[2] with her three most successful albums: My Name Is Gretchen, You and Me, and Lonely.^[3] She has been a longtime celebrity in Brazil known for her singing, dancing and, for a short period in her life, adult content. It was during her participation in Record^[4] reality TV show “A Fazenda”^[5] in 2012 that people began to pay more attention to her attitudes and expressions, which led to people creating memes about her. Seen below is a clip of Gretchen's most famous moments from the show, uploaded to YouTube^[8] on September 18th, 2019 by Televisão da depressão, which earned approximately 40,000 views in two years.

Online Presence

Noticing the singer's many facial expressions and funny reactions during her participation in the 2012 reality TV show, people on the internet started to dig out every interview or piece of media she had recorded and transformed into relatable memes with captions, shared mostly on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. For example, this March 23rd, 2016 meme (see below) posted on the Facebook page Pack De Memes uses a frame of the singer participating in a reality TV show with the Portuguese phrase "quem falar merda pra mim vai ouvir até não poder mais," which translates to "whoever talks shit to me will listen until they can't anymore." The image received 54 likes and 32 shares in six years.

This meme is one of the thousands created on social media with fake phrases over the images of Gretchen. A few other examples can be seen below:

Katy Perry Videoclip

On July 7th, 2017, the Brazilian singer was invited by Katy Perry to appear in her "Swish Swish" lyric video^[6]. Gretchen explained in an interview for Capricho^[7] magazine that the idea to feature in the video came from her fans, who kept sending Katy memes and GIFs of her. The video, seen below, has 89 million views and 1 million likes in 5 years.

Gretchen's Award Show Photoshoot

On September 25th, 2018, the singer participated in the Multishow TV's Music Awards show and used the event to take some pictures on a staircase, which would later be turned into a new image macro meme, having numerous versions of the picture with pop culture/trending events montages. This TikTok posted by @shinjimeuamor on September 29th, 2022 celebrated four years of the image alongside the song "World's Smallest Violin." The video received 259,000 views and 66,000 likes in a month.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References