'McDonald's in the Pentagon' TikTok song makes ska trendy again
If you could easily predict TikTok trends, I suspect you'd be spectacularly rich. There's so much money to be made on the platform — brand deals, chart-topping songs, major e-commerce — but its trends are so difficult to foresee.
Plus, TikTok is a weird place. A trending sound right now, for instance, is a parody song combining ska — the upbeat, horn-centric, staccato-guitar music that resurged in the '90s — and McDonald's inside the Pentagon.
If that sounds like a mishmash of words, that's because it is. The TikTok sound is an actual song created by a TikTokker @sillystu4u. To be clear, there is, in fact, a McDonald's in the Pentagon food court just for federal employees. The song from Silly Stu has the (expected) refrain of "There's a McDonald's in the Pentagon" and uses the upbeat ska to highlight that absurdity. The original TikTok of the song has racked up roughly 10 million views.
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People have then posted themselves singing along, dancing, or otherwise commenting on the catchy tune.
There is not necessarily an overarching theme to the folks posting with the song beyond the fact that it's catchy. The song itself, however, does a fine job of highlighting the absurdity of the U.S. government paying to have a McDonald's in the building responsible for maintaining its empire.
The tune focuses on a narrator flipping burgers for folks who can't talk about what they do for work because, well, they work in the Pentagon. All with a janky guitar sound and lots of horns. It really is a perfect little parody. TikTok is weird, but it can also be great.
Topics TikTok
Tim Marcin is an Associate Editor on the culture team at Mashable, where he mostly digs into the weird parts of the internet. You'll also see some coverage of memes, tech, sports, trends, and the occasional hot take. You can find him on Bluesky (sometimes), Instagram (infrequently), or eating Buffalo wings (as often as possible).
