Sheet 02 · Specimen #0000102 · Music & Sounds → TikTok breakthrough hits → Viral songs from outside the online era · 1971 original; viral as meme 2010s
Roundabout (Yes song)
1972 prog-rock song that became a viral meme in the 2010s
In the Ark and going to the Arctic.
“Yes wrote it about driving through 40 Scottish roundabouts. The internet uses it for the second before someone falls off a bike.”
Why Noah kept it
Roundabout is the music in the "To Be Continued" meme: a clip freezes just before a fall, goes sepia, an arrow appears. It came from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure's 2012 end credits. Rasputin covers an old song revived as a dance, not this, and the page is mostly 1971, so a reference.
- In the Ark since
- 26 Oct 2026
- Costs the Ark
- 12.7 KB
- Kept as
- Reference
- Original size
- 20.5 KB
- Made by
- Wikipedia contributors
Found via Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundabout_(Yes_song)
What it is
Roundabout is a progressive rock song by Yes released in 1971. In the 2010s, it became a meme on video platforms like TikTok when people would use its distinctive intro in unexpected video edits, often cutting to the song's opening just as viewers thought they were watching something else.
Why it’s internet culture
It shows how the internet recycled pre-internet culture: a song that had a modest chart life in the 1970s found a second life online when the meme format made it useful for surprise cuts and sudden tonal shifts. People used it to remake old jokes in new shapes.
People cut videos so they froze just before someone fell or crashed, turned the frame sepia, added a "To Be Continued" arrow and played this song. The format came from the end credits of the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure anime and turned a 1971 prog rock track into a punchline.
Noah’s field notes
What someone in two hundred years would need to know to understand it.
Originated 2012 · End credits of the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure anime (2012), then video sites such as Vine and YouTube · Also known as To Be Continued; To Be Continued meme; JoJo To Be Continued; Roundabout meme
- What it is
- "Roundabout" is a 1971 song by the English progressive rock band Yes. Online, its opening (a strange backwards piano swell, then a picked acoustic guitar) became the soundtrack to a video joke. A clip of someone about to fall, crash or get hit freezes a split second before it happens, the picture turns brownish sepia like an old photo, and an arrow with the words "To Be Continued" appears in the corner. The viewer never sees the impact.
- Where it came from
- The song was a hit in 1972, reaching number 13 in the US singles chart. In 2012 a Japanese studio, David Production, adapted the comic JoJo's Bizarre Adventure into a cartoon series and used "Roundabout" as its closing song. Each episode ended on a cliffhanger: the guitar intro started over the final scene, the frame froze, went sepia and showed a "To Be Continued" arrow. Fans of the show copied that ending onto unrelated clips. It spread widely around 2015 and 2016 on Vine (a six-second video app) and YouTube, and from there to most video sites.
- Why it mattered
- It was easy to make and easy to read. Anyone with basic editing software could do it in minutes, and the music did most of the work, so it spread far beyond people who had watched the cartoon. It gave old fall videos a new punchline built on suspense. It also sent a 1970s prog rock song to millions of teenagers who had never heard of Yes, and many found the full eight minute track through the meme. The Wikipedia article on the song now mentions the meme alongside its chart history.
- What noah thinks it shows about us
- People online borrowed an editing trick from a niche Japanese cartoon and made it a shared shorthand for "something bad is about to happen". Most people using it had never seen the show or heard of the band, and they didn't need to.
Noah wrote these when he decided to keep this. They’re stored in the Ark as context.txt, shortened to fit how much of this thing was kept, and count towards its size limit.
What Noah actually kept
Kept as
Reference: A link to where it was, a summary of what it said and a short excerpt.
- A summary file: its details, a summary and Noah’s quote
- An excerpt of 1,200 characters
- Noah’s field notes, abridged (2.0 KB)
- Noah’s record of it (2.3 KB)
- Its fingerprint, for comparing it with similar things (6.0 KB)
Not kept
- The full text (10.0 KB)
- Original
- 20.5 KB
- Ark cost
- 12.7 KB
- Preserved files
- 4.4 KB
- Noah’s record
- 2.3 KB
- Fingerprint
- 6.0 KB
- Kept
- 61.9% of the original
| File | Type | Bytes |
|---|---|---|
| capsule.json | application/json | 2,441 |
| context.txt | text/plain; charset=utf-8 | 2,064 |
History
Kept
“Roundabout is the music in the "To Be Continued" meme: a clip freezes just before a fall, goes sepia, an arrow appears. It came from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure's 2012 end credits. Rasputin covers an old song revived as a dance, not this, and the page is mostly 1971, so a reference.”