Picture this: you’re stuck in your house and have been for several days now. The outside world is becoming a mere mirage, a dot in the distance of your fleeting memory, now wholly occupied by blue light fatigue. A single man stands on his balcony, staring into the sunset, and sings: “Too much of anything can make you sick / Even the good can be a curse (curse)”
This is, of course, an entirely fantastical proposition spun off the back of the viral clip of Italians singing in unison on their balconies amidst the country-wide Coronavirus lockdown. It was a bittersweet moment in Italy’s fight against Coronavirus, a sign of hope and humanity in the face of adversity.
But it also, being a clip widely shared on the internet, quickly became meme fodder for the kids of Gay Twitter. Over the weekend, pop stans have been layering the audio of live performances over the clip of Italians singing from their balconies, and while it’s mostly been an in-joke for queer enclaves of Twitter, it has spilled out to reach the musicians involved too.
First up was Katy Perry, who thought this clip of the balcony singers bellowing “Roar” was real.
She retweeted the clip with the caption “You cannot break the human spirit. We are one in this” including a love heart emoji and the Hungarian flag. She later deleted the tweet and reposted with the Italian flag. At the time of writing, it is still live.
Then came the people’s princess of British pop music Cheryl, who fell for one Tweeter’s video of the throngs of people on the balconies singing “Fight for this Love”, a song which peaked at number five in the Italian charts 11 years ago. “I’m crying” she tweeted, though the original video has since been hidden after its creator put their account on private.
It was Madonna, though, who wins this game for us. “Let Us All RISE UP. everywhere around the world” she tweeted with a video of the group singing her song “I Rise”, with audio likely lifted from one of her live performances at London’s Palladium.
It’s fascinating that, despite several hundreds, if not thousands of people pointing out that these clips are all fake, each of these pop stars have decided to keep their tweets celebrating said falsehoods intact. In a time when everything is hugely uncertain, maybe it’s nice to have one thing, one overwhelming falsity, to find humour in for a bit? Either way, let’s revel in the absurdity of the internet for a while. And watch this “Chun-Li” one cause it’s quite funny too.