We Are Number One

"We Are Number One" is a song from LazyTown, a children's television show. It appears in the episode "Robbie's Dream Team", in which Robbie Rotten, the antagonist of the show, designs his own group to stop Sportacus, a super-athlete who teaches the kids of LazyTown to be healthy and exercise. The song is about Robbie trying to teach his dream team on how to catch superhero and be a villain.

History
The melody of the song was created in September 2013 by Máni Svavarsson while he was driving in his car and recorded him humming the tune on his mobile phone.

The song was first released on October 3, 2014, as part of the LazyTown episode "Robbie's Dream Team". The music video was released to YouTube in 2015. The song wouldn't become a meme until 2016, and is one of the few memes that was initiated by SiIvaGunner and then spread beyond it.

On December 12, 2016, the stems of the song were published by LazyTown staff on YouTube, SoundCloud and Mega.

Music video
The music video starts with Robbie Rotten asking his dream team (Bobby, Tobby, and Flobby Rotten) if they know how to catch a superhero. They say no and Robbie decides to show them. They try catching Sportacus in many different ways. These include a cage hanging from a branch (which traps Robbie), a large net, an apple with enough sugar in it to paralyze Sportacus, a smaller net, and banana peels that are supposed to be used for Sportacus to slip on, but instead affect Robbie's team.

The apple is effective and cause Sportacus to go unconscious and be carried off by the team into an underground location. Meanwhile, Robbie stays on the surface, setting up a cannon to drive Sportacus away. However his plan is thwarted by Stephanie, one of the kids that lives in LazyTown, when she delivers an apple to Sportacus through a tube. He eats the apple and gains strength to break free from his cage and lure Bobby, Tobby, and Flobby into playing soccer.

Robbie sees that the team is playing soccer and, in rage, goes over to the team while tripping over a bucket, which sends him into the cannon. The cannon sets off and Robbie goes flying. The end of the music video shows Bobby, Tobby, and Flobby falling into a pit they set for Sportacus.

Rips
The first "We Are Number One" rip, "Hilltop Chase - Kirby Super Star Ultra" was uploaded to the SiIvaGunner channel on September 2, 2016 by Nape Mango. The song didn't become a meme, however, until September 13, when NBGMusic uploaded "We Are Number One - LazyTown: The Video Game" to the channel. The rip is a remix of We Are Number One with many old memes mixed in. The rip was later the first upload on the channel to receive one million views.

On September 21, since edits of The Nutshack intro had become a meme on YouTube, "HEHEHE I AM A SUPAHSTAR WARRIA" made the video: "Nutshack but every Nutshack is replaced with We Are Number One". On September 29, icesnort uploaded an edit of the video: "look at this net".

On October 10, as Stefen Karl, the actor of Robbie Rotten in LazyTown, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, a gofundme page was started. SiIvaGunner shared the link on its Twitter account on October 11.

On October 15, xDEFCONx uploaded "We Are Number One - Robbie Rotten (xDEFCONx Remake)", a remix of the song, shown through Synthesia.

On October 25, MrMrMANGOHEAD made several videos of Robbie Rotten saying "Don't let your kids watch it!" and started a long series of edits of the "We Are Number One" music video. The first one was "We Are Number One but the saxophone instrument at the beginning is played through out + distortion". His videos got viral very fast.

On October 27, a "We Are Number One" subreddit was created, for uploading "We Are Number One" edits. Then more and more people started making edits of the music video on YouTube, with some of them sitting at millions of views.

On December 11, as a thanks to everyone supporting his gofundme, Stefan Karl performed the song live with the dream team from the show and also released the stems for the song, which caused more remixes to appear.

Then MrMrMANGOHEAD became a controversial topic on the channel, due to the fact that he had a Patreon for his low-effort memes. MrMrMANGOHEAD was criticized in the videos "We Are Number One (epic funny meme edition super remastered not gay) - LazyTown: The Video Game" and "A "Hard Day's Work" - Mr Rental: The Video Game" from January 22 and January 30, 2017.

SiIvaGunner continued uploading rips with "We Are Number One" during the SiIvaGunner Christmas Comeback Crisis, such as "Susume→Tomorrow - Love Live! School idol festival", "Rookie and Popple (Beta Mix) - Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga" and "Lunatic Eyes ~ Invisible Full Moon - Touhou 14.5: Urban Legend in Limbo".

On August 13, 2017, Stefan Karl shared a message on the gofundme page, saying that he was currently free of cancer metastases.

On August 21, 2018, Stefan Karl passed away due to bile duct cancer. The SiIvaGunner team decided not to release an official postmortem tribute on the channel, which Chaze the Chat has explained was due to two reasons: they didn't want to seem like they were capitalizing off Karl's death, and they couldn't think of anything that seemed passionate enough to be a fitting tribute.

Playlist

 * Playlist of We Are Number One rips