Celebrity Meme Status — How To Capitalize According to Drake and Taylor Swift
Memes; my favourite thing in the world. I love memes. I live for memes. Memes can be sayings, pictures, and sometimes, people; and celebrities are no exception, the high amount of internet memes derived from their antics in the last few years being an incredible number. Whether they do idiotic, stupid things, have awful pictures of them plastered with hilarious captions, or release entire music videos depicting actions that have been construed as meme-worthy, to say that celebrities rise above meme-age would be a flat out lie. Here are two musicians who became memes and the masterful way they handled it in the online public discourse.
- Drake
Oh, Drake, you poor thing. Our hometown hero has been turned into a meme countless times, with some lovely ones like these blessing our Twitter feeds:
However, Drake’s biggest memeable moment came in the form of his Hotline Bling music video, where his eccentric dancing has amassed a number of different memes, most of which, I still see on my social media feeds today.
Drake’s constant meme status, whether it’s from music videos or court-side seat shenanigans, has propelled the Toronto native into a marketing genius, taking his embarrassing, strange moments and capitalizing on them through monetary tactics. The silly moments he has allows him to market himself as a hardened rapper along with being a relatable, funny, and interesting dude, allowing the masses to see themselves in him. This humble nature has made him universally adored, and even when he’s dancing like a moron in his music videos, it only makes him more endearing.
2. Taylor Swift
I can say, with a little bit of shame, that I love Taylor Swift. The shame stems from how meme-able she is, and how she always seems to be in the middle of something, being just a little bit problematic in her handling of situations. But I do love her — and I’m sure if I was in the middle of an argument with Kim and Kanye, I probably wouldn’t be able to handle it perfectly either.
Taylor has always had memes floating around about her (mostly stemmed from her dating habits), but her meme status really exploded last year with the release of her song Look What You Made Me Do. Taylor had experienced a slew of backlash from Kimye and their fans, her Instagram in the previous year being spammed with snake emojis and #TaylorSwiftIsOver hashtags. She went off the radar for months and took the fuel from the backlash to create a bright, burning flame to redeem herself.
To capitalize on her mistakes and public spats with the Kardashian clan, Taylor took the snake in which she was labelled to promote her new song with a spooky video, leaving her fans to whip into a frenzy.
A couple days later, her new song was released and was filled with marketing genius, promotional intelligence in the highest degree; and so many subtle jabs at her enemies to make it exciting and trendy.
The video sees Taylor dressed up in exaggerated outfits and singing angrily about her fall from grace due to the harsh aggressiveness of her enemies. But the real owning of her meme status came at the end of the video, where the many different iterations of Taylor made fun of each other, saying past Taylor quotes that were always considered as cringy or a joke.
The reclamation of her embarrassing responses to her public controversies shows that Taylor knows how to take a bad situation and turn it into good publicity, demonstrating her marketing prowess within a cutthroat industry longing to bring her down. Her entire album reputation details these instances, and then shows how the starlet takes her painful mistakes and turns them into catchy, layered songs; and I reckon some would say, sophisticated musical art that makes her millions of dollars. Taylor’s ownage of her meme status propelled her as a mainstay in online culture, for better or for worse.
