I Will Never Stop Thinking About "We Like Pizza," An Earworm From Nowhere

When most people think about songs to send someone to piss them off, they think of meme classic "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley. Not me. I think of something far stranger, less mainstream, with much more mysterious origins. I think of "We Like Pizza" by (who else?) Pizza Kids. Specifically, my mind goes to this 4:3 static image version uploaded to YouTube ten years ago:

This is my "Never Gonna Give You Up." For a decade, my sister has been sending me this video at random (our own custom Rickroll), but she also sends it any time either of us talks about pizza, which is a lot. And it doesn't stop with me. She sends it to her friends, her closer coworkers, and the rest of our family. When I asked my sister how she initially found the song, she said that one of her best friend's ex-boyfriends showed it to her, at which point they all watched it on loop. (My sister says, however, that this ex-boyfriend "cannot be interviewed because he doesn't deserve that celebrity.")

And so too have I carried on this family tradition, this vital duty of my bloodline. I send "We Like Pizza" to anyone I can, whenever I can. Sometimes I send it to someone because they're talking about pizza. Sometimes I just send it to someone because I hate them, or because I love them very much.

"We Like Pizza" is, in short, weird as hell. The song is a 2006 single from German studio Allmusica, and seems to be one of their last releases. The 2006 release date is the first thing that struck me when researching this song; the Techno 101 beat feels like it cannot possibly be more recent than other relics like 2000's "Hamster Dance." Perhaps the most memorable part of the song (except for all of it, because it's only two verses repeated several times) is the moment when the children list what they like on their pizza, and one child simply says, "I like pizza with tomato," followed by a long, uncomfortable silence.

Achieving some meme status, "We Like Pizza" has its own entry on Know Your Meme—but the entry is blank except for the video. "We Like Pizza" does have its own Genius page, which is divine, and features explanations such as, "In We Like Pizza they love any type of pizza so much they have to say it twice, only supporting their views on pizza."

Some members of Gen Z might be familiar with the song thanks to Roblox, an online game platform that allows users to program their own games for fellow users to play. Within Roblox's popular Cleaning Simulator there exists an Easter egg where the player can find a cassette tape, put it into a boombox, and enjoy a "We Like Pizza" dance party with their friends. What a life this song has had!

In 2018, Pizza Kids and Allmusica evidently decided to capitalize on this meme status, as well as the high profit margins of YouTube videos for kids. Pizza Kids started a YouTube channel to host different versions of the now classic hit (and also a cover of Vengaboys' "Boom Boom Boom Boom!!" for some reason). These aren't re-recorded versions of "We Like Pizza," to be clear. They're all using the same vocal recording, now years old, just backed by slightly different beats.

Included in the channel's uploads is "█▬█ █ ▀█▀ We like Pizza | Pizza Kids | Official Frozen Version," a slight remix of the original with no references to frozen pizza or Frozen. Given that the video has under 500 views as of this writing, I'm guessing that adding "Frozen" to the title didn't leverage the YouTube algorithm as much as the channel owner would have liked.

And the channel's inclusion of an official lyric video is not to be missed. The video begins with an ominous hum as we look down onto a glowing, beautiful earth from the perspective of space. Slowly, metallic all-caps letters fly into frame, suspensefully spelling out . . . "PIZZA KIDS." The video then hard pivots to unhinged Fiverr-esque animation typical of other kids' music channels. Like the music itself, the animation simply repeats. It's unhinged and awful, and I love it.

I think about "We Like Pizza" at least every month, but often, much more—and now you will, too. The next time someone you love, or hate, or just happen to be talking to brings up pizza, I hope you show them this video. I hope that you tell them, simply, "I like pizza with tomato.................." or perhaps, if you're feeling fancy, "I like pitsa pepa roni motzarella and panchovi." And I hope the next time they think about pizza, they start singing this song too.