This Edit of Homer Simpson Singing ‘Flashing Lights’ Is the Best Thing to Come Out of ‘The Simpsons,’ Kanye West and Social Media in a Long Time
Besides his brief and reviled time fronting a Nirvana-esque grunge band back when he and Marge were broken up, Homer Simpson isn’t exactly known as a world-class songwriter — but he can absolutely rock a cover.
It’s easy to get down about the state of modern music when browsing TikTok. In an age when cracking the algorithm is more important than rhythm and melody, there’s a depressing sameness to the types of songs that get stitched and repeated ad nauseam on the way to hit status. Then, when you look at how the recent-past legends of the music industry have adapted to the modern era, the world of music grows even bleaker as massively influential figures like Kanye West continue their dive well off the deep end into Nazi waters from which they may never escape.
Hell, any assessment of pop culture as formed by social media is doomed to give the not-insane scroller a sense of overwhelming dread. But every now and then, a bright, flashing light pierces through the slop and gives us hope for the future of art.
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Earlier this week, that light came in the form of YouTuber fumu’s take on the classic Kanye song “Flashing Lights” as performed by rapidly cut and pitch-shifted clips from The Simpsons:
fumu’s mashup went viral on TikTok when a meme account ripped the video and reposted it as if it were their own content, but Simpsons and Kanye fans were quick to point out that the above post from late 2023 is the true origin of the finest multimedia mosaic to come out of The Simpsons, Kanye and all of social media in a long time.
As listed in the description of the original music video, “Flashing Fishbulbs” belongs to a genre of content called YouTube Poop Music Videos, a collection of high-effort edits of beloved TV shows and movies that transforms them into a remix of a popular song. The sheer level of editing ingenuity and number of work hours needed to create such a masterpiece as “Flashing Fishbulbs” sure seems like it deserves more credit than some lazy, thieving TikToker whose only technical talent is learning how to download YouTube videos.
But what do I know?
