In the first verse of “I'd Rather Be Me” from the musical Mean Girlsthere's a note that's frankly a bit too high for your average voice to sustain. It requires a clear tone and solid belt — a vocal technique that comes from using your chest voice to hit a high note for an extended period of time — and can be challenging even for those trained in musical theater. Jodie Langel, a Broadway actor and vocal coach, has spent the past 10 years teaching methods and skills to hit these notes. On TikTok, one simple trick has skyrocketed an average TikTok post into one of the biggest runaway memes right now. And it all starts with three easy sounds: ya ya ya.
Langel has been making TikToks about vocal coaching since 2021. So when she attended the Texas Thespian Conference in November, she thought nothing of posting one of her “90 Second Musical Transformations” on the app. In the clip, one of the students is trying to nail the difficult section of “I'd Rather Be Me.” The lyrics, sung by the character Janis, tell a gathered audience to “raise your right finger/And solemnly swear,” and are a powerful part of Janis' declaration to school bullies and the general teenage population that she's done with the bullshit of high school. But in Langel's coaching session, the vocal student struggles with the high notes on the words “right finger,” causing her voice to crack. Langel's answer: getting the student to sing the words “raise your ya ya ya,” while pointing straight to the sky. After a few successful practice runs, she tries the real line again, and absolutely nails it, causing her fellow students to cheer.
In the month since Langel first posted the clip, the video has been chopped up, remixed, reposted, and used for so many edits that it's transformed from a quick one-off to a meme 200 million views deep. “Raising your ya ya ya” has managed to permeate every invisible boundary between fandoms and genres online. Sports franchises like the Phoenix Suns, Las Vegas Raiders, and the Golden State Warriors have all used Langel's sound as beat drops to earth-shaking edits of their greatest plays. There's Sabrina Carpenter “Ya Ya Ya” edit compilations, Arcane and Squid Game versions, and re-creations by everyone from Broadway actors to Disneyland characters. On social media platforms like X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, and TikTok, raising your ya ya ya means being unburdened, with many users posting their ya ya ya as affirmations. “Consider my ya ya ya raised,” read one comment on an edit that's been liked more than 16,000 times. “You know what, hell ya ya ya,” read another. Raising your ya ya ya isn't just an activity. It's a state of mind.
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