Oct. 19, 2025

TIK TOK'S VIRAL HITS Lady Gaga - "Bloody Mary" and "The Dead Dance" From Wednesday Addams

Show Notes
Transcript

Welcome back to Hitmaker Chronicles! I'm your host, Garrett Fisher. Today we're transitioning from TikTok summer hits to Halloween season with the perfect bridge - Lady Gaga's gothic resurrection story. We'll trace how "Bloody Mary," a forgotten track from 2011's Born This Way, became Wednesday Addams' unofficial theme song eleven years later, despite the scene being choreographed to a completely different song. Then we'll explore how this viral moment led to Gaga literally entering the Wednesday universe with "The Dead Dance." It's a story about algorithmic necromancy, goth kids teaching Gen Z how to dance, and what happens when memes become canon. Let's dance with the dead.

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Callarogashark Media, October twenty twenty five. I'm Garrett Fisher, and

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if you want to understand how we got from Summer

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TikTok virality to Halloween, you need to understand the unholy

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trinity that occurred in November twenty twenty two, a dancing Wednesday, Adams,

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a decade old Lady Gaga deep cut, and millions of

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teenagers with editing software. What happened next was less viral

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trend and more cultural seance, a resurrection so complete that

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it bent reality itself. Let's start with the corpse. Bloody

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Mary was track eight on Lady Gaga's twenty eleven Born

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This Way album, an electropop hymn featuring Gregorian Chance, where

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Gaga assumes the role of Mary Magdalen, not Mary Tudor,

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the Bloody Mary of English history, but the biblical figure

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Gaga I had worshiped since her Catholic girls' school days.

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It was Gothic, it was spooky. It featured the hypnotic refrain,

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dance dance, dance with my hands, hands hands, and for

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eleven years it was essentially dead, never released as a single,

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never a hit, the kind of track you skip on

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Your Commute and rediscover years later with shame. Cut to

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November twenty third, twenty twenty two, Netflix drops Wednesday, Tim

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Burton's Adam's Family spinoff starring Jenna Ortega in episode four,

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WHOA What a Night? There's a scene at the Nevermore

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Academy's annual Raven Dance. Wednesday, in her gothic black dress,

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performs what can only be described as a possession disguised

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as choreography, arms jerking like a marionette, controlled by a

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grinning ghost face, expressionless yet laser focused movements that Ortega

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herself choreographed after two sleepless nights watching footage of goths

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dancing in eighties club studying Suzie Sue, Bob Fosse's rich

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Man's Frug, Lisa Loring, Leni Lovitch. Here's the Thing. The

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dance was set to The Cramps nineteen eighty one psychobilly

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classic Googo Muck. The music supervisors Jen Malone and Nicole

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Weisberg had specifically chosen it. They considered the Cramps Human

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Fly first, then landed on Googo Muck as perfect for

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Wednesday's personality. Everyone was super psyched. It was cleared, it

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was filmed It was perfect, but the Internet had other plans.

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On the exact same day Wednesday premiered November twenty three,

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twenty twenty two, a TikTok user created an edit replacing

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Googo Muck with a sped up version of Bloody Mary.

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The edit was so perfect, so inevitable, that within days,

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millions of people believed this was the actual song from

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the show. The fan edit became more real than reality.

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TikTok declared without hesitation that Wednesday Adams danced not to

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the Cramps, but to Lady Gaga. The numbers tell the

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story of resurrection. On August eighteen, twenty twenty two, Bloody

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Mary had five hundred sixty one thousand streams. By December first,

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one week after Wednesday premiered, it hit one point eight

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million daily streams, a five hundred nine percent increase. It

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entered Spotify's viral charts in sixty five countries. It charted

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on the Billboard Hot one hundred for the first time

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ever eleven years after release. Googoo Mauk saw a nine

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five hundred percent increase in Spotify streams two but it

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was fighting a ghost, and the ghost was winning. What

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made this phenomenon. So uncanny wasn't just the numbers, it

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was the asymmetry. A pop anthem from twenty eleven resurrected

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by people who were children when it was released. Grafted

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onto a scene that was never supposed to feature it,

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the meme became stronger than thehal culture, bent to the

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collective will of TikTok. As one cultural critic noted, it

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was necromancy. The undead had been given a beat, and

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the beat was Gaga's. Lady Gaga could have ignored it.

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She could have let the fan mash up breathe on

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its own instead. On December seventh, twenty twenty two, she

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leaned all the way in. She posted a TikTok video

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caption Bloody Wednesday, painting her eyes dark, donning Wednesday's uniform

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with the frilly white collar, and performing the dance herself

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two point six million likes. The Circle titaned Mother Monster

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had arrived at Nevermore Academy, invited by her little Monsters.

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Slay Wednesday. Gaga tweeted, You're welcome at House of Gaga anytime,

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and bring thing with you. We love pause around here wink.

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The official Wednesday Twitter account responded, I see you doing

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my dance moves to at Lady Gaga's Bloody Mary. I understand,

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she followed by little Monsters. I approve fiction and reality

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were starting to blur. The algorithm had spoken, and Hollywood listened.

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By December twenty twenty two, Bloody Mary was sent to

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French and Italian radio as an official single. Eleven years late.

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In January twenty twenty three, it went to US Pop radio.

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The sped up version was featured in the teaser trailer

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for Wednesday season two. At Coachella twenty twenty five, Gaga

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opened her Mayhem set with Bloody Mary appearing in an

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enormous Crimson hoopskirt reminiscent of the Tudor era, stretching three

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stories high, concealing a bird cage with her backup dancers

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locked inside. But here's where the story gets truly supernatural.

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In November twenty twenty four, The Hollywood Reporter announced that

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Lady Gaga would appear in Wednesday season two, not as

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a cameo, not as a wink to the fans, but

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as Rosalind Rotwood, a legendary Nevermore teacher. The meme had

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become cannon. The fan edit had rewritten Reality at Netflix's

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Graveyard galon New York City on September ninth, twenty twenty five,

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with Jenna Ortega, Emma Myers, and three hundred fans in attendance,

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Gaga surprised everyone by announcing The Dead Dance, a brand

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new song written specifically for Wednesday. Season two, Part two.

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Guest stepped into Bespoke Coffins to hear an exclusive preview

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of the track. The inspiration for the Dead Dance was

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a breakup. Gaga explained, It's all about the way that

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we sometimes feel when it's over, how a relationship ending

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can kill our ability to feel hopeful about love. It's

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got this really cool, funky beat underneath it, and that

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becomes not just about the relationship. It becomes about having

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fun with your friends when you've been through something tough.

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Co creators Alfred Goff and Miles Miller revealed Lady Gaga

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became a big fan of season one when her song

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Bloody Mary became the de facto track for Wednesday's viral

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dance on TikTok. This year, we wanted her to join

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the show and we're thrilled she agreed. Think about what

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this means a TikTok at. It was so powerful it

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manifested an actual collaboration. The fans didn't just interpret the text,

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they rewrote it. They summoned Lady Gaga into the Wednesday

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universe through sheer collective will. It's the most twenty twenty

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story imaginable, the audience becoming co creators, the algorithm as

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casting director, virality as destiny. As we transition from summer

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into Halloween season, Bloody Mary represents something new in pop culture,

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the complete collapse of the boundary between official and unofficial,

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between canon and fan fiction, between what was intended and

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what the Internet decides is true. Wednesday's Dance was never

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supposed to be set to Bloody Mary, but now it

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can never be anything else. The song that was dead

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for eleven years is now forever link to a dance

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it was never meant to a company. This Halloween, as

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Wednesday Season two streams and the Dead Dance inevitably goes viral,

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were witnessing the completion of a circuit that began with

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millions of teenagers deciding that a goth girl's dance needed

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a different soundtrack. They were so convincing that they convinced

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reality itself. They didn't just resurrect Bloody Mary, they resurrected

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the very idea that fans can will their dreams into existence.

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Ortega said she took inspiration from archival footage of goths

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dancing in clubs in the eighties. Those goths dancing to

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Bauhaus and Christian Death in forgotten clubs had no idea.

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They were creating a visual vocabulary that would, forty years later,

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teach millions how to move their bodies to a Lady

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Gaga song that didn't exist. Yet time folded in on itself.

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The past possessed the present to create the future more

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in a moment. From TikTok summer hits to Halloween Horror,

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from Bloody Mary to the Dead Dance, from fan edit

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to canonical appearance. This is how pop culture works now.

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The dead don't stay dead. The fans write the script.

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And sometimes, if you dance strange enough, if enough people

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copy your moves, if the algorithm smiles upon you, you

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can summon a pop star into your gothic universe just

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by collectively willing it. So this Halloween, when you see

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kids doing the Wednesday dance at parties, remember they're not

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just copying a TV show. They're participating in a ritual

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that bent reality, that turn fiction into fact, that proved

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the most powerful force in entertainment isn't studios or stars,

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It's millions of people with Wi Fi and a shared

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delusion strong enough to become true. Dance dance, dance with

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your hands, hands hands, indeed, Welcome to the new world

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where the monsters run the show and Mother Monster herself

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shows up when summoned, the seance worked, the circle is complete.

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Nothing beats a resurrection story for Halloween, especially when the

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corpse dances itself back to life. Next week on hit

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Maker Chronicles, we're diving deep into Halloween territory with the

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song that defined horror comedy for a generation. How did

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Thriller go from Michael Jackson's attempt at funk rock credibility

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to the most important music video ever made? And why

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do we still do that zombie dance forty years later?

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I'm Garrett Fisher. Keep dancing even if you're dead.