4 Non Blondes — "What's Up?"
Linda Perry wailing "what's going on?" over a strummed anthem the whole planet sang along to in 1993 — titled "What's Up?" because Marvin Gaye had already claimed the obvious name. It hit number fourteen in the US, topped charts across Europe, and then got the strangest second life in pop history: as the internet's beloved He-Man meme.
4 Non Blondes were an American rock group built around Linda Perry's voice and songwriting. Their debut album, "Bigger, Better, Faster, More!", arrived in 1992, and "What's Up?" went to radio as its second single in March 1993. The title is a small joke of pop real estate: the chorus wails "what's going on?", but the song was deliberately named "What's Up?" to avoid any confusion with Marvin Gaye's 1971 classic "What's Going On".
The song reached number fourteen on the US Billboard Hot 100, but its real conquest was overseas — it topped the charts in a dozen European countries and cracked the top ten in five more, and its video earned a nomination for Best Alternative Rock Video at the 1993 MTV Video Music Awards. The band never had another hit anywhere near it.
The afterlife came in two acts. Perry became one of pop's most in-demand songwriter-producers, writing "Get the Party Started" for Pink and "Beautiful" for Christina Aguilera. And in 2005, a Fort Worth animation studio called SLACKCiRCUS made "Fabulous Secret Powers", a parody video setting a campy techno-house cover of the song to He-Man cartoon footage. The resulting "HEYYEYAAEYAAAEYAEYAA" meme has been re-introducing "What's Up?" to new corners of the internet ever since — plenty of people met the joke years before they met the song.
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