The star spangled banner, I’m proud to be an american, Wii menu music. Obviously the two songs mentioned first in the list are recognized all over our country as uniting pieces of music that have helped create our american identity. But some would argue that the menu music to the iconic Nintendo Wii video game console serves the same purpose for thousands of Americans. Now when looking at this from the lens of someone that grew up prior to the age of mass electronic media, this may seem like an absurd statement, but to those that spend the majority of their days as a student this may not seem outlandish.

In an independent study conducted by me, it was found the 10/10 Davis High students would recognize all three of these songs prior to the chorus. Many may say that this was too small of a sample size, yet a group study also conducted by myself found that 98/100 recognized the Wii menu music, with 95 recognizing the other songs. But what does this data mean?

Well in short the data tells us that the new wave of the american populous will recognize a song created to fill the empty noise left on a video game console menu screen as well as they recognize songs created to from a national unity. With this information, we may expand this to an even bolder conclusion, Wii menu music is the first of many songs that will continue to create national unity. Take Despacito for example, the song of the summer that exited the realm of the top 100 and entered our very own culture, spawning memes and sayings from a simple song featuring Luis Fonsi. “This is so sad, Alexa play Despacito”, was a massively spoken saying in the late summer to early fall months of the year, many couldn’t spend a day at school without hearing a reference to the Latin american themed song. Given that the majority of people could recognize it after the first couple of notes, often singing in large groups.

If the future continues in this odd cultural shift, we may one day live to see the day when the national anthem is obsolete, and replaced by pop culture spectacles that happen to be popular at the given moment. We might as well enjoy the music of our ancestors as long as we can, because the future is on the horizon, and what a confusing future it truly is.