I Knew You Were Trouble

About

“I Knew You Were Trouble” is a 2012 hit pop single by American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift from her fourth studio album Red. In February 2013, the chorus part of the song became a popular subject of audio-spliced mash ups and parodies featuring similarly high-pitched notes sampled from a range of viral videos.

Origin

Taylor Swift’s dubstep-influenced pop single “I Knew You Were Trouble” was originally released on October 9th, 2012, followed by the premiere of the music video on December 13th (shown below, left). Largely driven by digital sales, the song debuted at number three on the Billboard Hot 100 and received generally positive critical reviews and ratings.^[1]

On February 9th, YouTuber Goosik uploaded an audio-spliced mash up of Taylor Swift’s song with the Yelling Goat edited into the chorus (shown above, right). Within three weeks, the upload accumulated more than 1.09 million views and 800 comments.

Spread

In the following weeks of February, YouTuber Goosik’s mash up went viral and spawned dozens of derivative remixes.^[2] On February 22nd, YouTuber MaShitUp2012 uploaded another remix featuring the 2010 music video “Firework” by Katy Perry, including several yelling goats from The Roosevelts’ supercut montage (shown below). In less than a week, the video received over 260,000 views and 40 comments.

Goosik’s “Yelling Goat” remix continued to gain popularity through shares on the social networking site Facebook, as well as mentions on many other forums and websites. There is a fairly popular subreddit called /r/iknewgoatsweretrouble where there are more than 50 variations of the clip from Taylor Swift’s video.^[3]

Notable Examples

Search interest

External References