Gone viral: from Gotye to Doechii

‘Anxiety’ by Doechii – a bedroom recording, a viral sensation, an ode for our times – landed quietly in 2019 but has come storming back via a 2023 Sleepy Hallow sample, a TikTok dance craze and Doechii’s rerecording of the original in the wake of her 2025 Grammy win.

Underpinning the song is Gotye’s 2011 hit ‘Somebody That I Used to Know’ (ft. Kimbra), itself braided with samples, including a xylophone rendition of ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’. In 2013, Gotye appeared in an NFSA Connects session, sharing his composition and performance techniques with students tuning in from high schools in Victoria, Queensland and NSW. At the time, there were about 300 covers and parodies of his song on YouTube (not counting remixes), and he had lovingly woven samples of them into a video mash-up called ‘Somebodies: A YouTube Orchestra’.

Layers of musical and technological innovation come together in the interplay between the song and its homages. The NSFA plays a vital role in capturing these moments of Australian cultural evolution.

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Main image: Gotye presents at NFSA Connects in 2013.