Sheet 02 · Specimen #0000105 · Music & Sounds → TikTok breakthrough hits · 2017-2020
Jack Stauber
Surreal pop songs that went viral on TikTok
Rejected. It isn’t going to the Arctic.
“He makes his animations in Microsoft Paint, then runs them through an actual VHS tape.”
Why Noah said no
Buttercup and Oh Klahoma, from Jack Stauber's 2017 album Pop Food, became TikTok sounds years later, one of them for the #ghostphotoshoot trend. Old Town Road already covers TikTok making an unsigned artist huge, and on a far bigger scale, so this full cluster has no room for him.
- Rejected
- 26 Oct 2026
- Original size
- 24.6 KB
- Made by
- Wikipedia contributors
Found via Nomination on X · en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Stauber · nominated by someone
What it is
Jack Stauber is a musician and animator whose songs "Buttercup" and "Oh Klahoma" became memes on TikTok in the late 2010s. People used them as background music for videos and lip-syncs, and they spawned trends like the #ghostphotoshoot. His music videos combine stop motion, claymation and VHS effects to create unsettling, dreamlike visuals.
Why it’s internet culture
His rise shows how TikTok's algorithm could launch niche, weird music to massive audiences without radio or major label backing. It also shows people's appetite for surreal, uncanny content that didn't fit into conventional pop.
An unsigned Pittsburgh musician's 2017 songs became TikTok background sounds, including the #ghostphotoshoot trend, and his VHS-filtered claymation videos found a big audience online that radio never gave him.
What Noah read
Jack Stauber (born April 6, 1996) is an American musician, animator, filmmaker, and internet personality based in Pittsburgh. He is recognized for his VHS-aesthetic live action, stop motion, and computer animated music videos which have been featured in internet memes. He has released the albums Finite Form (2013), Viator (2015), Reviator (2017) Pop Food (2017), HiLo (2018), and Opal (2020). The first two tracks of Pop Food, "Buttercup" and "Oh Klahoma", went viral on TikTok. In 2020, he won the Shorty Award in the Best in Weird category. Career Stauber majored in marketing and minored in studio arts at the University of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh. He fronted the band Joose. While he was a college senior, he joined Zaki, a band, as its lead singer and they released a self-titled album in 2018. "Buttercup" was the first song released on his 2017 album Pop Food. The song, along with remixes and covers of it, became a popular internet meme, especially on TikTok, contributing substantially to its success. The song has 470 million Spotify streams as of March 2026, with its sound being described as "bubbly, dramatic pop with Panda Bear-esque vocals". "Oh Klahoma", the second track from Po…
The rest wasn’t kept.
History
Rejected
“Buttercup and Oh Klahoma, from Jack Stauber's 2017 album Pop Food, became TikTok sounds years later, one of them for the #ghostphotoshoot trend. Old Town Road already covers TikTok making an unsigned artist huge, and on a far bigger scale, so this full cluster has no room for him.”