Manoel Gomes

Submission 2,296

Part of a series on Brazil. [View Related Entries]

About

Manoel Gomes is a Brazilian musician known for the viral song Caneta Azul (Blue Pen) in 2019. He popularized after the release of his song "Caneta Azul" in 2019 and again in 2022 with edited clips of him with dubbed audios of Homelander from the Amazon show The Boys.

Background

Manoel Gomes^[1] had been writing songs since he was 15 years old in the NorthEast region of Brazil and previously worked as a security guard. In early October 2019, he uploaded one of his songs on YouTube (now deleted) called "Caneta Azul" (Blue Pen), which ended up trending as a meme in late 2019. The new video (see below) has 750,000 views and 20,000 likes since it was re-uploaded on January 15th, 2020.

He explained to a local news channel^[2] that the song was inspired by his time in school when he repeatedly lost his blue pens, saying, “back at school I lost one, lost another, then nobody gave me the pen that had my name on it.” As of December 2022, Manoel Gomes has accumulated 309,000 followers on his YouTube^[3] channel and 1.5 million followers on TikTok.^[4]

Online History

"Caneta Azul"

The now-deleted video of Gomes’s song Caneta Azulreached 5 million views on YouTube in less than a month with the help of other Brazilian celebrities posting the viral song on their social media, like the Brazilian DJ Alok, who played a remixed version of the song during his live concert on October 28th, 2019 (clip seen below).^[9]

A deep faked version of the song swapping Manoel’s face with former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was also shared by Bruno Sartori on October 26th, 2019, garnering 351,489 views and 17,000 likes on YouTube.^[8]

Manoel Gomes as Homelander

Around mid-August 2022, new memes of the Brazilian singer resurfaced on TikTok comparing him to the character Homelander from The Boys_. The memes sometimes reference Manoel as a sigma male, implying he is desired by many women and has a mysterious past that changed the way he is today. Posts (such as the one seen below) show Gomes’s unbothered behavior when a bike accident happens near him. The video below, uploaded on August 22nd, 2022 by TikToker^[6] @.atd, has the same soundtrack used by Homelander and even some effects making Manoel appear to have Homelander's superpowers. The post garnered 130,000 views and 20,800 likes in five months.

Another meme about the Brazilian singer's resemblance with the character was posted by TikTok^[7] user @fisico_no_talo on August 21st, 2022. The post is a montage of scenes of the show with clips of Manoel Gomes, and it received 238,000 views and 36,700 likes in five months (seen below).

"Se Você Não Me Ama"

In the midst of his resurgence in popularity, Manoel Gomes decided to release a new song on November 6th, 2022, called Se Você Não Me Ama (If You Don’t Love Me) on his YouTube^[10] channel. In one month since uploaded, the song had 1.5 million views and 38,000 likes on the platform (seen below).

Before the song's official release, a clip from a radio interview^[5] with Manoel in which he sings the new song went viral on TikTok, reaching almost 6,000 videos tagged in the sound. The clip turned into a viral trend on the platform, with people mimicking Gome’s gestures while lip-syncing the song. This TikTok^[11] by @w_i_llia post (below, left) on November 11th, 2022, garnered 2.1 million views and 193,000 likes in one month. Another TikTok^[12] by @juulia_dantas_ also joined the trend and posted a video (below, right), adding a fake mustache to mimic the singer. It receiving 259,000 views and 18,000 likes in one month.