Elvis Presley poses for a portrait in circa 1965. (Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
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A TikTok remix of Elvis Presley’s “Hound Dog” is spreading through social media, sparking an explosion of bizarre imagery featuring the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.
Presley’s 1956 version of “Hound Dog” was a major hit with the youth of 1956—70 years later, the song is going viral on TikTok, absorbed into the “brainrot” trends of Gen Alpha and Gen Z.
Elvis Presley, patron saint of American pop culture, has officially entered the halls of brainrot iconography.
Brainrot memes are semi-ironic celebrations of low culture, characterized by surreal imagery (often AI-generated), annoying sounds and frenzied, overstimulating edits, packed with as much noise and nonsense as possible.
TikTok users are now posting caricatures of Elvis in comments and editing videos set to the tune of an annoying (yet strangely addictive) house edit of “Hound Dog.”
The resulting cascade of weird, rapid-fire “Hound Dog” edits are spawning increasingly insane Elvis imagery on the video-sharing platform.
So far, the King has been reimagined as a pair of singing hotdogs, an unsettling Peter Griffin hybrid and spliced with Italian Brainrot star Tung Tung Tung Sahur (who has grown popular enough to appear as a Fortnite skin).
Like many Gen Z trends, TikTok’s “Hound Dog” meme sits on a hazy line between irony and earnest celebration, originally inspired by a controversial post.
In early April, TikToker @yup.bro.beatz posted a video featuring a house edit of Presley’s “Hound Dog,” dubbed the “Elvis Presley Minimal Tech Edit.”
The song sparked backlash on TikTok, the comments being overwhelmingly critical.
In response, Yup Bro Beatz decided to embrace the negativity and repost his remix, jokingly describing TikTok as “going crazy” over the song, which inspired a wave of ironic praise.
The meme exploded in popularity after TikToker @iheartitsreal posted a video describing the remix as “the song of the summer,” adding Elvis Presley caricatures, shaping the trend into a grotesque caricature-fest.
“Hound Dog” is often associated with Elvis Presley, but the song was originally performed by blues singer Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton and released in 1953, three years before Presley’s famous cover.
Some of the memes pay tribute to Thornton, featuring montages tracking the evolution of “Hound Dog,” culminating in the TikTok remix.
A few TikTok videos feature classic footage of Elvis performing on stage, dubbed with the “Hound Dog” remix and jokingly captioned “Elvis if he actually made good music.”
The bizarre TikTok trend comes in the wake of Baz Luhrmann’s new Elvis documentary, EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert, which was released last February.
The legacy of Elvis Presley seems almost endless, his life inspiring a glut of documentaries, books and feature films, but few could have predicted the King’s surreal resurgence on TikTok.
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