If you have a smartphone, a laptop, or a tablet, you’ve seen the Wednesday dance.
The new Tim Burton Netflix series, starring Jenna Ortega, features a scene where the titular character dances quite intensely to “Goo Goo Muck” by The Cramps. And just like any Netflix scene that includes a song in it, it went viral on TikTok. But unlike how earlier this year we saw the Stranger Things vs Kate Bush “Running Up That Hill”-ification of the radio, with the 37-year-old song going viral on TikTok, then becoming a hit for a new generation, this time around the kids have managed to get the wrong old song famous again.
Not long after Wednesday premiered, videos began cropping up of people recreating the dance (which Ortega choreographed herself). But instead of setting the dance to The Cramps’ song used in the show, TikTokers set it to a hyped-up dance remix of a 2011 Lady Gaga song called “Bloody Mary.” The choice to switch up the song could be for several reasons: maybe The Cramps’ song wasn’t readily available on TikTok, or perhaps the lyrics of “Bloody Mary” felt especially apt with Ortega’s choreography (I’ll dance, dance, dance / With my hands, hands, hands / Above my head, head, head / Like Jesus said).
Either way, the song became so intrinsically tied to the series that it’s sometimes labeled “Wednesday Dance” under TikTok audio, and Lady Gaga herself recreated the dance set to her own song, effectively jumping the music shark. Hell, a clip of the Wednesday dance now plays whenever you queue up “Bloody Mary” on Spotify. “No one’s talking The Cramps. Real shame!!” Parrot Analytics’ Julia Alexander tweeted.
TikTok dances and audios going viral isn’t a new concept, but TikToks effectively dictating what gets on the radio is only something we’ve seen within the last year or so. And now, 11 years after it was released on Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” album, “Bloody Mary” is getting its first chance at radio rotation, as Gaga’s team has released it as a single.
DJ White Shadow, who produced the song, is grateful for the TikTok mixup, writing on Twitter, “THANK YOU TO THE FANS. THANK YOU TO @ladygaga NOT TO SOUND COCKY BUT I AM PROUD THAT WE MAKE THINGS THAT LAST…”
“Bloody Mary” is currently sitting as the fifth-most popular song from the “Born This Way” album on Spotify, behind only the singles that got heavy radio play back in 2011 and 2012. This is the weirdest shit. TikTok associated the wrong song with a Netflix dance scene and injected new life into it over a decade later. We live in weird times, kids. Little Monsters, rise up. Sorry to The Cramps.