On Monday night, Canadian superstar Drake released the video for his latest hit single, “Hotline Bling,” on Apple Music. By Tuesday, the internet was already neck deep in parodies and remixes, as expected. The video, directed by fellow Canadian Julien Christian Lutz, better known as Director X, is nothing too out of the ordinary for Drizzy. Over a mid-tempo groove, a predictably mopey, mournful, and sweatshirted Drake, shaken to his core by some estrangement of affection, gently sways and gyrates amid geometric, color-changing sets. Also, he’s haunted by sex line operators for some reason. Par for the course, really. But the denizens of the internet have taken “Hotline Bling” in some strange and gratifyingly uncool directions. One popular tactic has been to sync Drake’s dance moves to popular television theme songs. Twitter user @tole_cover, for instance, chose Kelsey Grammer’s immortal “Tossed Salads And Scrambled Eggs” from Frasier.
This same Twitter fan also did a version with Drake dancing to Vince Guaraldi’s “Linus And Lucy,” which is doubly appropriate since the Peanuts gang is about to make a big-screen comeback, and Drake has often displayed a Charles M. Schulz-esque air of self-defeating gloom.
Meanwhile, @gypseehussle chose the still-redeemable theme from The Cosby Show for her Drake remix.
It’s not all TV themes either. There are numerous international iterations of “Hotline Bling” as well, employing music from around the globe. Drake, it seems, can be made to dance hypnotically to any kind of melody one can imagine. It requires only the will to do so. And a surprising number of online fans possess that will. Somewhere, Thom Yorke is either bursting with pride or weeping over his usurping at the hands of Aubrey Drake Graham, the internet’s new favorite terpsichorean muse.