Talented Guitarist Adds a Heavy Metal Accompaniment to the Wordless ‘Trololo Guy’ Song

Guitarist André Antunes (previously) stepped slightly away from musically interpreting the rants of various US televangelists to instead add heavy metal accompaniment to Soviet vocalist Eduard Khil singing a wordless song in the Vokaliz tradition. This performance later became known as the Trololo Guy meme (previously) and which has been used as a bait and switch prank similar to “Rickrolling”.

The performer singing in the video was identified as Eduard Anatolyevich Khil, a Soviet-era vocalist once celebrated as the “Honored Artist of the USSR” in 1968 and “People’s Artist of the USSR” in 1974. The song is an example of the Vokaliz tradition, a style of singing similar to the pantomime and American scat singing of the 1920s. The video was later renamed “Mr. Trololo original upload” and received over 26 million views and 48,500 comments over the next eight years.

Here’s Khil’s original performance.