Neil Cicierega

Blasphe-memes & earworms for the internet generation

Jul 29, 2022

Neil Cicierega, unless you're chronically online there’s a good chance you haven't heard of him. And if you have heard of him, there's a chance you're not quite sure how to say his last name: sih-sur-EE-gah.

Note: When first posted, Spotify didn’t have a lot of the songs listed in this article. Sometime in 2023 “Mouth Silence” got added, so I made a Spotify playlist, but it’s still missing some of the best songs. Be sure to look through the list below.

This is just going to be a list of my favorite tracks of his, if you want more general info about him and his various projects, check out this usesthis.com interview or his Know Your Meme entry, or even his tumblr.

In the early days (2001-03ish) he was mostly known for his series "Potter Puppet Pals", which wasn't on my radar as I was never a fan of Harry Potter. He was also releasing music under the name Trapezoid at this time. I heard eBaums World Dot Com when it was making the rounds online around 2005, but didn’t know who he was until a while later when I saw the animation for "Geeks In Love" on Albino Black Sheep. A short while after that he went super-viral for his song "Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny", which was basically just a rundown of the internet memes du jour.

To this day USOUD is one of his most well-known works, along side his Harry Potter series and his remix of the Ghostbuster's theme song, "Bustin'". That said, I'm not going to focus on those tracks more than merely mentioning them here... because, tbh, they get enough attention and I was never really a fan of any of them anyway. What I am going to be focusing on are his mashups and other original releases as "Lemon Demon" — that's where the gold is, IMO.

Buuuuut... maybe just one round of "What's Dylan Grillin'?" before we start...

Ahh... ok... starting back in 2003...

The Saga of You, Confused Destroyer of Planets

From the 2003 Lemon Demon debut, Live From The Haunted Candle Shop

I've Got Some Falling to Do

Hip To The Javabean, 2004

eBaums World Dot Com

Newgrounds Flash Animation, 2005

Word Disassociation

Damn Skippy, 2005

Geeks In Love

Damn Skippy, 2005

Note: Geeks In Love was one of the first things I heard by Neil, and while it's remained among my favorites over the years, one thing has always bugged me: the conflation of geeks with nerds. There can obviously be overlap, but there doesn't necessarily need to be. That said, the differentiating characteristic is that "geeks" are just obsessive consumers of pop culture and lack the practical intelligence and discipline of nerds. The couple in the video are clearly geeks, but are portrayed are being "smart" and it's implied that it's due to them being "geeks"... but it's actually because they're nerds... geeky-nerds, but that song isn't as catchy.