Sorry, But The Chug Jug Song

I’m in charge of the website this weekend, which means I can convey my suffering to you under the guise of content. I am sorry.

Surely you are familiar with “Chug Jug with You”, a Fortnite-themed parody of “American Boy” by Estelle and Kanye West. If somehow you’re not, or you just want to hear that fucking thing again, here it is:

The above version is from 2018, but the song came back to life a few months ago thanks to its viral spread on TikTok, which I’m too old to figure out how to use, but I love to laugh at those who end up on my Twitter feed. While the moment for the song seems to have come and gone, has it ever really gone?

No.

This particular interest in “Chug Jug With You” started this morning when I made the mistake of scrolling through Facebook. A friend had posted the unusual message to them: “10 victims on the board right now have just destroyed Tomato City.” Are you playing Fortnite ?! I started commenting enthusiastically – as a Fortnite resident of Kotaku I spend a lot of time trying to get my friends to play Fortnite with me, which they hardly ever do.

But while typing, I thought to wait, is Tomato Town still in the game? It was then that it hit me, with trembling force: my friend had written a lyric excerpt from “Chug Jug With You”. It was all downhill from there.

Things turned out exactly as you expected: I remembered how weird and not-funny-but-is-actually-funny-oh-no-it’s-actually-funny -is-it-not-expect-no-that- is not correct, the song is, so I searched for it on youtube, then my friend shared a vtuber cover so i watched that, and now the song is going through my head on an unstoppable loop. Because my brain is only invested in making my soul miserable, then I thought I was wondering if I could learn to play this song on the guitar. This led to researching the “American Boy” chords, which I was happy to learn as all chords I know of. Then I searched YouTube for “Chug Jug song acoustic guitar”. YouTube, of course, is full of guitar lessons for the song, as well as TikTok duets with John mayer cover it up (remember John Mayer ?!). So of course I had to check it all out, with a few detours to remember John Mayer before I got back on track, and now it’s hard to write this blog because I keep typing the words “Chug Jug With You “instead of anything I’m trying to say.

Fortunately-slash-alas, I can’t learn to play “Chug Jug With You” on guitar yet. I chipped off the nut (that’s what it’s called, let’s get ripe here) around the high E string of my guitar, so now the chords played on the first fret sound like crap. A friend offered to fix it if I could do what I thought was the simple task of measuring the nut and buying a new one. But none of the measurements I get on my tape measure seem to match the available parts I can purchase, so I just delayed the task until I could determine if I am poorly able to measure or if my guitar is weird. I can still play guitar if I use a capo, but “Chug Jug With You” doesn’t require a capo, and I could use one anyway, but it won’t sound the same and then I’ll be all hooked up if it sounds weird from the capo or because I’m too crazy about the guitar for someone who has apparently been playing it for so long.

(If you can cover “Chug Jug With You” on the instrument of your choice, please share it in the comments.)

This guitar digression is exactly what’s wrong with, but also so awesome, stuff like “Chug Jug With You”. The random flash point of a friend’s Facebook post not only resurrected the song in my brain, but sent me a rabbi of YouTube musicians and Twitter memes and guitar research and thoughts on the course of my life itself, opening up unrelated facets of my world. which are nevertheless bound by “Chug Jug With You”. There is so much crammed into the song – too many Fortnite landmarks, too many words in general – that almost anything can remind you of it at any time. Although his TikTok broadcast and articles on his TikTok broadcast have stopped, he’s still hiding there, ready to pounce on your gray matter.

Plus, let’s face it, this is the perfect time in world history for “Chug Jug With You,” or at least my world experience. Pandemic lockdowns have ruined my brain, making sustained tasks like reading and writing difficult, if not impossible. These days when I’m not working I watch TV shows I’ve seen a million times again – maybe I’m on my fifth tour through BoJack Horseman – because my brain can barely chain complex thoughts and my emotions can. I can’t handle media where I don’t know what happens next. The harmless and familiar eye-catching character of “Chug Jug With You” makes me feel safe, in a world where unknown things are constantly waiting to blind me with their horrors. Her absurd memetic spread makes it hilarious in that absurd and messy way the best things on the internet are now that I spend all of my conscious hours trapped inside with her. When I can see other people again, I’m sure someone will say something at random and I will helplessly drop a saying of “Chug Jug With You” like the Twitter trending sidebar my brain has become. And maybe everyone will laugh and then I will shut up, thinking about all the tolls this time took on those of us who survived it, thinking about how something incredibly stupid like Maybe “Chug Jug With You” helped me. It also reminds me of how much everyone has sacrificed, how that squeaky-voiced call for camaraderie and adventure is cringe-worthy in his serious maybe, but also, really, that’s it. what many of us have wanted for a year.

Either way, enjoy the song.