Irny Irdina’s hilarious lip syncing of the David Archuleta tune Crush may have gone viral enough to garner the actual singer’s attention, but it’ll never live up to the true OG of spicy Singaporean meme subject, Paul Seow.
Who dat, you ask? Son, pay your respects to the dude who was unexpectedly lit during a tech demo of Creative Technology’s Prodikeys. Uploaded in 2001 in the days before Facebook (and during the homegrown audio company’s heydays), the clip went on to achieve internet virality several years ago on YouTube. Here was a geeky-looking Singaporean uncle absolutely killing it on a midi keyboard in a cheesy commercial. Without a trace of irony, Seow proclaims that “This is rock ’n’ roll”. And indeed, it was — Seow’s demo has gone through several remixes, parodies, and it’s even been sampled in a Frank Ocean track.
Local music site Bandwagon recently managed to catch up with Seow, who’s still working at Creative Labs as a marketing manager today. Surprisingly looking younger than he did before, he explains how he and his team came up with the now-legendary video and how he’s come to terms with his viral fame.
