from YouTube.com
You can't force something to go viral, or predict how it will. Last week's 2006 finale of "Saturday Night Live" was the most musical version in weeks, if not years, with the super-cute girlie opening number, "Santa's My Boyfriend," the return of the BeeGees, Omeletteville sequel Homelessville (hat tip: Parnell) — and an SNL Digital Short featuring Andy Samberg and host Justin Timberlake as 80's Hall & Oates-style crooners, singing a love song about the perfect gift for their lady. If you don't know what that gift is by now, you've been semi-under a rock, but in any case, we'll tell you: It was "Dick In A Box," and honestly, it's damn catchy. Which is why, a week later, after the bleeped-out airing followed by the uncensored version on YouTube followed by the New York Times piece reporting on the backstory to the censor skirt — well, following all that it still has legs — not only as a video, but as a song. The evidence of this: At around 11:10 pm last evening at SoHo House in New York, the familiar catchy strains of a Justin Timberlake song came on, and ears perked up. As the realization set in, a burble of excitement passed through the bar, and when the chorus came on, the place exploded — people were singing along, bopping to the beat, and clearly knew the words. It is, of course, a novelty song, but it's definitely catchy, and just like The Chanukah Song before it, I'd expect to hear it on the airwaves (bleeped), in clubs and on iTunes over the next little while. Almost a year to the day since "Lazy Sunday" made its debut, whipped around the web and scored an NYT piece (hat tip: Parnell), Samberg, the Lonely Island guys and SNL have done it again. Is "Dick In A Box" as innovative, clever, hilarious, groundbreaking, sly or quotable as "Lazy Sunday?" Nope. But in order to go viral, it doesn't need to be — it just needs to be sticky. And at the very least, we can be sure that "Dick In A Box" is that.
