The Picard Song

About

The Picard Song is a remix track created by the musician DarkMateria, which uses sequenced quotes by the character Jean-Luc Picard from the science fiction television series Star Trek: The Next Generation. The song rose to fame online after being featured in a YTMND page in April of 2004.

Origin

On March 7th, 2001, DarkMateria^[5] uploaded a song titled “The Picard Song” to his personal website^[4], featuring a remix compilation of memorable quotes by Captain Jean Luc-Picard (played by Patrick Stewart) from the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation. The song remained relatively obscure until it was used in a YTMND^[3] page created by user ShittyMcShit on April 25th, 2004. Within eight years, the page received over 3.8 million views, 1,800 comments and a 4.55/5 star rating.

The Character

Captain Jean-Luc Picard first appeared in the pilot episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation titled “Encounter at Farpoint”^[2], which premiered on September 28th, 1987. According to the canon, Picard became the commander of the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D) after attending the Starfleet Academy. He is often depicted as being a diplomatic, patient and highly intelligent leader that is able to be forceful when necessary. Within Star Trek's fanbase, Picard is also recognized for popularizing a number of memorable quotes, including “Make it so”, “There are four lights!”, “Engage!” and “I am Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise," which have been featured in various remix videos and image macros.

Spread

On May 21st, 2004, Newgrounds^[10] user WarG0blin uploaded a flash video titled "The Picard Song", which featured crude animations of Picard with the DarkMateria song playing in the background. On June 21st, an Urban Dictionary^[11] definition for "Picard Song" was submitted by user Mister Ignorant, referring to it as "the best song ever on YTMND." On July 7th, "The Picard Song" was featured in another flash animation by Newgrounds^[7] user Jeremy Lokken (shown below, left). On September 10th, 2006, YouTuber CoJux uploaded a video titled "The Picard Video" (shown below, right), featuring Picard-related video clips and images accompanied by the DarkMateria song. Within six years, the video accumulated over 2 million views and 5,600 comments.

On July 19th, 2007, the Picard video was highlighted on the Internet humor site College Humor.^[8] On October 15th, 2009, the Internet news blog Urlesque^[6] published a post titled "The 10 Best YTMND Single-Serving Sites of All Time", which placed the "Picard Song" YTMND page as fifth on the list. On March 23rd, 2011, the girl gamer blog Dpad Damsels^[9] published a post titled “This Geek’s Guide to YouTube Music Videos”, which placed the Picard video as its second favorite choice on the list.

Notable Examples

On YouTube, several machinima music videos and lip dub videos were created using the DarkMateria track.

Search Interest

External References