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The Hampster Dance is one of the earliest examples of an Internet meme. In its original incarnation, the meme first surfaced as a web page in 1998. Created by Canadian art student Deidre LaCarte as a GeoCities page, the dance features rows of animated GIFs of hamsters and other rodents dancing in various ways to a sped-up sample from the song "Whistle Stop" by Roger Miller. In 2005, CNET named the Hampster Dance the number-one Web fad.

Background

Canadian art student Deidre LaCarte (of Nanaimo, British Columbia) was in a competition with her best friend and sister to generate the most Web traffic when she created the Hampster Dance page in August 1998. She named the site Hampton's Hamster House in homage to her pet hamster, "Hampton Hamster", who on the page declared his intent to become a "Web star."

The Hampster Dance site originally consisted of a single page with just four hamster (and other rodent) animated GIFs, repeated in rows by the dozens, and with an infectious background tune that looped endlessly. At the time the page was created, embedding background music in HTML pages was a fairly novel browser feature. The clip, a 9-second looped WAV file, was a sped-up sample of Roger Miller's "Whistle Stop", a song written for the opening credits of the 1973 Disney animated feature film Robin Hood.

From its creation in August 1998 to March 1999, the Hampster Dance site only recorded about 800 total visits (roughly four per day). In February 1999, Word of the website spread by e-mail and early blogs. By March, the site gathered approximately 60,000 views in four days. Soon the site was even featured on bumper stickers and in a television commercial for Internet service provider EarthLink. A common office prank at that time was to set a co-worker's browser homepage to the Hampster Dance Web site, which led to televised news reports that furthered its notoriety to an international level. The site later expanded, revealing the names of all four characters (Hampton, Dixie, Hado, and Fuzzy) and offering themed versions for birthdays, graduation, holidays, etc. Fans of the site created variations on the original theme, using politicians such as Dan Quayle and Cynthia McKinney, as well as household objects such as Pez dispensers.

The popularity of the website led to the creation of an entire song called "The Hampsterdance Song" based around Roger Miller's "Whistle Stop" sample which was produced by The Boomtang Boys and released in July 2000. A cartoon video was produced for the single which introduced a digital "band" of hamsters, which was first dubbed solely as "Hampton the Hampster" but later as "Hampton and the Hampsters". The song reached number-one on the Canadian Singles Chart while peaking at number 32 on the RPM charts. In Australia, "The Hampster Dance Song" was released in 2001, and reached number 5 on the ARIA singles chart. The song proved to be very successful on Radio Disney, where it became the station's all-time most played song, and was later included on the compilation album Radio Disney Ultimate Jams. Prior to the release of "The Hampsterdance Song", a similar song featuring an unofficial sound-alike rendition of "Whistle Stop" was released as "Cognoscenti vs. Intelligentsia" and performed by The Cuban Boys. This version peaked at number 4 on the Christmas 1999 UK singles chart.

Following the relative success of "The Hampsterdance Song" single, entire albums featuring the fictional band were released, including Hampsterdance: The Album (2000), Happy Times Ten (2002), The Hampster Dance Party (2002), Hampsterdance Hits (2004), and A Very Hampsterdance Christmas (2008). Some follow-up singles were moderately successful in Australia, such as "Thank God I'm a Country Boy" (a cover of the John Denver song, reaching number 12) and "Hampster Party" (reaching number 44). A flash animated series was planned by Canadian animation studio Nelvana, but never made it past the planning process.

Continued popularity led LaCarte to get a professional redesign of the site and add an online store offering T-shirts and CDs of the fictional group's music. For some time the hamsterdance.com and hampsterdance.com domains were owned by humor business Nutty Sites, and LaCarte thus used the domains hamsterdance2.com and hampsterdance2.com. LaCarte originally owned the hampsterdance.com domain, but in early 2000 it was transferred to Nutty Sites for undisclosed reasons. In late 2001, she acquired both domains.

The Hampsterdance song

"The Hampsterdance Song"
Single by Hampton the Hampster
from the album Hampsterdance: The Album
Released	July 3, 2000
Recorded	1999
Genre	Eurodance, Bubblegum Dance
Length	3:34
Label	ZYX Music Koch
Songwriter(s)	Roger Miller R. DeBoer A. Grace P. Grace
Producer(s)	The Boomtang Boys
Hampton the Hampster singles chronology
"The Hampsterdance Song" (2000) "Thank God I'm a Country Boy" (2000)

"The Hampsterdance Song" is a song by Hampton the Hampster. It was released in July 2000 as a single. It was produced by The Boomtang Boys, who used a sped-up hook from the Roger Miller song "Whistle Stop", notably featured in Disney's 1973 film Robin Hood.

Charts

Certifications

References

1. Top 10 Web fads - from CNET
2. Hamsters, You've Got Mail! Sun Sentinel
3. ^ Whitburn, Joel (2008). Hot Country Songs 1944 to 2008. Record Research, Inc. p. 180. ISBN 0-89820-177-2.
4. "2 Scoops of Quickies". Slashdot.org. 1999-02-09. "The Cunctator sent us link that can only be described as the hamster dance."
5. Burkeman, Oliver (9 December 1999). "Hamming it up". The Guardian. Retrieved 6 December 2017.
6. ^ Hampsterdance liner notes - "Includes elements of 'Whistle Stop' by Roger Miller" Koch Records. (2000)
7. BBC: Festive Fifty 1999
8. "Hampton the Hampster on Amazon Music". www.amazon.com. Retrieved 6 September 2018.
9. "A Very Hampsterdance Christmas by Hampton and the Hampsters". 20 October 2008. Retrieved 6 September 2018.
10. australian-charts.com - Hampton The Hamster - The Hampsterdance Song
11. "Hampster dancing into other venues". usatoday30.usatoday.com. Retrieved 6 September 2018.
12. "Welcome to HampsterDance2". 14 September 2000. Retrieved 6 September 2018.
13. "Roger Miller - Biography". www.rogermiller.com. Retrieved 6 September 2018.
14. "Hampton the Hampster – The Hampsterdance Song". ARIA Top 50 Singles.
15. "Artist Search for "hampton the hampster"". AllMusic. Retrieved 6 September 2018.
16. RPM peak Archived 2015-11-05 at the Wayback Machine
17. Billboard AllMusic.com (Retrieved April 29, 2009)
18. "ARIA Charts – Accreditations – 2001 Singles" (PDF). Australian Recording Industry Association. Retrieved 27 August 2017.

External links

• Original GeoCities version at the Wayback Machine (archived November 28, 1999)
• Hampster dancing into other venues

• Single chart usages for Germany2
• Viral videos
• 1990s fads and trends
• 2000 songs
• Music memes
• Novelty songs
• Songs about animals
• Fictional hamsters
• Songs written by Roger Miller