The Beer Song

ⓘ This lostwave is classified as unsolved.
The Beer Song
Genre	Parody
Length	1:23
Year	2000, possibly late 1990s
Original poster	Zac Turney (reference), Masonogy1 (song)
Search started	2000
File:TheBeerSong.mp3

The Beer Song is an unidentified parody of Georges Bizet's Carmen Overture (1875), credited to various musicians on peer-to-peer file sharing websites in the 2000s. This is the most popular unidentified song in terms of viewership. According to Lostwave Charts, the song has nearly 29 million YouTube views across numerous reuploads.

Background

On January 30th, 2000, the song was first mentioned in a UseNet group dedicated to the band They Might Be Giants by user Zac Turney, claiming to have downloaded it from an MP3 website and that the song was being misattributed to the band. The song was then mentioned in a Frank Zappa UseNet group, where user Jack P. Armstrong claimed that it is frequently misattributed to They Might Be Giants on Napster.

The song appeared on a bootleg They Must Be Giants compilation album from the early 2000s called Working Undercover For The Man, and a 2005 article for the TMBG wiki misattributed the song to DVDA, a punk rock band founded by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

The song was first uploaded to the internet on September 7th, 2003, as a Newgrounds animation by Masonogy1, and on November 16th, 2005, the song was first uploaded to YouTube by user azn3gangster misattributed to Weird Al Yankovic.

In 2004, Dah Yang Toys released a novelty toy called "Beer Man" with a soundbox that plays an alternate version of the song.

The song became most popular on the internet in 2006, with reuploads by Andreas/Rohschinken (Lego Beer Song) and higertrudeher (misattributed to Adam Sandler) gaining a combined 14.7 million views on YouTube.

Leads

Possible

• The Rise Guys Morning Show: South Carolina radio show that has played the Beer Song every Friday since its inception in 2003 as the Friday Beer Song. It is unlikely that they created the song, as it was available on file sharing sites prior to the show's creation.

Debunked

• Weird Al Yankovic: Not featured on Al's official catalogue from the 2000s, and is included on the Not Al List, a list of fake Weird Al songs misattributed to him on file sharing sites.
• They Must Be Giants: Not included in the band's official catalogue from the 2000s, and was named as a fake song in their mailing list.
• Adam Sandler: Not present in any Adam Sandler film or on any of his comedy albums.
• Matt Stone and Trey Parker / DVDA: Not in DVDA's discography nor in an episode of South Park.
• Stefanie and Felix Boisvert: Refers to the creators of a popular lyric video rather than the creators of the song.
• The Arrogant Worms: Canadian comedy folk-rock band who had the song misattributed to them on a YouTube reupload, did not make the song according to a reddit user who contacted the band through Facebook.
• The Bob & Tom Show: Refers to an American radio show where the song was suggested to have aired, but it was mistaken with another song, Beer Run by Todd Snider, which did air on the show.
• Phil Nichol: Canadian comedian and singer who had the song attributed to him in the description of a 2020 animation of the song uploaded on YouTube by user Shannon Rice Lewis. The OP claims to have obtained Nichol's permission to create the video, and that Nichol posted it on eBaumsworld in 2001-2002, but eBaumsworld didn't allow user submissions until late 2006, and commenters claimed to have asked Nichol themselves, who said he never made the song.