Hello Darkness My Old Friend I Come to Talk With You Again

About

"Hello Darkness, My Old Friend" is the opening lyric from the 1964 soft rock song "The Audio of Silence" performed past the American folk stone duo Simon & Garfunkel. Online, the introduction of the song is often used as background music in a multifariousness of parody and remix videos for dramatic issue.

Origin

In October 1964, Simon and Garfunkel released the vocal "The Sound of Silence" as a track on their debut studio anthology Wednesday Forenoon, 3 A.M., which features the lyrics "hello darkness, my old friend" in the commencement verse.

Hello darkness, my onetime friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my encephalon
Even so remains
Within the sound of silence

In May 2013, Season 4 of the American sitcom Arrested Development was released on Netflix, which independent several scenes featuring the song when the character Gob experiences a moment of deep regret (shown below). Post-obit the season'south release, search interest for the phrases "hello darkness" and "hello darkness my one-time friend" saw a dramatic spike on Google Trends.

Spread

On July eighth, 2014, YouTuber Joe Bell uploaded a clip of the Sad Brazilian Fan with "The Audio of Silence" playing in the groundwork (shown below, left). On July 30th, YouTuber convulsion0inc uploaded footage of electronic trip the light fantastic toe music producer David Guetta performing at the Tomorrowland music festival with "The Sound of Silence" dubbed in the background (shown beneath, right). The following day, Redditor dragonsky posted the video to the /r/youtubehaiku^[4] subreddit. Inside two years, the videos received upwards of 7.one million views and 1.3 million views respectively (92% upvoted).

On January 27th, 2015, Redditor larperdoodle submitted a post titled "Howdy dankness my onetime friend" followed by the phrase "I've come to browse your memes over again" to the /r/dankmemes^[six] subreddit. The same lyric was afterwards used in a page on the humour site DankMayMays^[7] featuring the Gnome Child with "The Sound of Silence" playing in the background (shown below).

Hello dankness my old friend I've come to browse your memes again face text nose head

On Feb seventh, the /r/TheSoundofSilence^[3] subreddit was launched, featuring various YouTube videos with the vocal edited into the background audio. On March 14th, YouTuber rockwillor uploaded footage of feminist protester Chanty Binx with "The Sound of Silence" verse playing at the end of the prune (shown below, left). On May 1st, YouTuber TeamZoo uploaded a video of a human being appearing expressionless while riding a reverse bungee thrill ride with "The Audio of Silence" playing in the background (shown below, correct). In 4 months, the video gained over 1.2 1000000 views and 580 comments. On July 25th, Redditor beet111 submitted the video to the /r/videos^[2] subreddit, where it received more than five,700 upvotes (89% upvoted) and 700 comments in 2 months.

2016 Billboard Hot Rock Songs

On March 24th 2016, Yahoo! News published a video interview with the Batman Five Superman: Dawn of Justice lead actors Ben Affleck and Henry Cavill, in which they were asked how they felt nearly the mixed to negative reviews the moving-picture show had received. Cavill then took the lead in answering the question while Affleck remained seated in silence with a noticeably lamentable look on his face. That same day, YouTuber Sabconth created a parody of the interview prune titled Sad Affleck, featuring a collage of headlines from review articles, indicating the negative reception of the movie, set to the intro from "The Sound of Silence"(shown beneath). Within three weeks, the video gained more than 21 meg views and 32,500 comments.

On March 29th, the heavy metal band Disturbed performed a live comprehend of "The Sound of Silence" during an appearance on the late night talk show Conan (shown below). Within two weeks of being uploaded to YouTube, a recording of the performance gathered up of 2.02 million views and 4,00 comments.

Billboard Hot Rock Nautical chart

In April 2016, "The Sound of Silence" reached the No. half-dozen position on the Billboard'south Hot Stone Songs chart. On April 6th, Billboard^[8] published an article revealing that the song's resurgence in popularity was influenced past the Distressing Affleck video and Disturbed's cover. Additionally, Billboard reported that the song had reached the No. 2 position on the Rock Streaming Songs chart, with upwards of 5.six million streams up 582 percent.