Putin Plays Piano

About

Putin Plays Piano refers to a series of YouTube remixes of Russian president Vladimir Putin playing the piano. Online, people replace the audio of the video with other songs for humorous effect.

Origin

On May 14th, 2017, the Russian government-owned news organization Sputnik released a video of Russian president Vladimir Putin playing the piano while waiting for President of the People's Republic of China Xi Jingping in a Beijing state guesthouse.^[1] The video (shown below) features Putin playing two songs: "One Belt, One Road" and "Evening Song." On YouTube, the video received more than 1 million views in one year.

Predecessor

Prior to the video of Putin playing piano while waiting for President Xi, other video remixes of Putin playing piano could be found online. One of the earliest was posted by Youtuber ZloyRus on October 1st, 2015. In this video (shown below, left), Putin plays the "Imperial March" from the film Star Wars.

Another video of Putin at the piano was posted on May 8th, 2016 by YouTuber Emes. In the video, Putin plays the song "Still D.R.E." by Dr. Dre featuring Snoop Dogg. The post (shown below, right) received more than 3.4 million views in two years.

Spread

On May 15th, 2017, YouTuber Ombre posted a video of Putin playing "The Star Spangled Banner." The post (shown below) received more than 2,100 views in one year.

The following day, YouTuber Pace Audio posted a video of Putin playing the song "Rasputin." The post (shown below, left) received more than 1.8 million views in one year.

Three days later, YouTuber Timothy L posted a video of Putin, again, playing "Still D.R.E." Within one year, the post (shown below, right) received more than 50,000 views.

On July 25th, 2018, Twitter @waxpancake posted a video of Putin playing "A Thousand Miles" by Vanessa Carlton. The post (shown below) received more than 1,700 retweets and 4,500 likes in one week.

On August 1st, Mashable ^[2] published an article about the meme.

i made this and i'm not sorry pic.twitter.com/1X5DGWAsSi

— Andy Baio (@waxpancake) July 26, 2018

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References