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| Crazy Frog had the fourth-highest-selling song of 2005. They don't make 'em like they used to. (Supplied: Facebook) |
By Dan Condon
Few pop culture properties are as polarising as the Crazy Frog.
Some found him so endearing. A little animated creature mimicking the sound of a motorcycle, hooning around to Harold Faltermeyer's 'Axel F', the theme song from Beverly Hills Cop.
Many considered him the most irritating pop culture invention ever. Originally dubbed The Annoying Thing, this creature was not just nauseatingly grating, he had such a hold over Australian culture through the mid-2000s that he was genuinely inescapable.
Crazy Frog's 'Axel F' went to number one in Australia and spent 21 weeks in the charts. It was our fourth-highest-selling song of 2005 and was all over the TV, thanks to mobile phone ringtone companies (remember them?) who ensured no Big Brother viewer would escape the frog's call.
It wasn't just us. 'Axel F' went to number one in a dozen countries, its worldwide dominance belying its humble origins.
"It wasn't always this kind of a huge project," says Sigfrid Söderberg, CEO of Crazy Frog Entertainment, a key player in bringing Crazy Frog to life in the early 2000s.
"It started off as almost nothing, no big commercial idea behind it. It was a fun little thing for us."
Where did Crazy Frog come from?
Going viral in the pre-social-media era seems quaint now. It meant your picture, sound, or video had pinged from inbox to inbox as we figured out what to use this extraordinary new 'email' technology for.
That grating audio where the Crazy Frog imitates the sound of a moped had already had its viral moment before the actual frog character even entered the picture.
Swedish teenager Daniel Malmedahl created the sound as 2TAKTARE.MP3 in 1997, and soon it was popping up in email inboxes worldwide.
A few years later, Sigfrid Söderberg and his colleague Andreas Wicklund were recruiting for their animation studio Kaktus Film, when Erik Wernquist's application came across their desk.
"On his show reel was this little character," Söderberg says. "We didn't think much of it. It was a fun little creature.
"We sort of saw the potential, but there was still a lot of water to flow under the bridges before something happened."
An early animation of the Crazy Frog made its way to a big player in music, who saw the potential that the Kaktus team wasn't sure was there.
"This clip ended up at the record label Ministry of Sound in Berlin," Söderberg says. "They had this song ['Axel F'] that they thought would match with this character, so they asked if we wanted to do a joint venture in making a music video with our character for this song."
When 'Axel F' became a worldwide hit, no-one was more surprised than the men behind the video.
"We didn't believe in it at all," Söderberg admits.
"It was a low-budget music video, so we said, 'We can do this video if we get a cut on everything. But we'll just do it, and we'll send it to you when it's done. You can't say anything about it. No feedback'. They agreed and… yeah, that went well."
From the musicians' perspective, there was no need for feedback. The clip was precisely what they'd hoped for, and they knew they were onto something big.
"When they received the video, they said they immediately knew that they had a hit," Wicklund says.
"I mean, I don't know how you can tell that. Maybe it was a bit easier in those days because the competition wasn't as big, and we could actually [produce] some high-quality animation.
"We really put our heart and souls into the production. We really worked hard, because we did that music video that we wanted to be proud of."
The backlash
Given that Crazy Frog was originally called The Annoying Thing, and that it was a bizarre-looking character aping the already-grating sound of a noisy vehicle, the fact there was backlash isn't surprising.
"You either hated it or you loved it," Wicklund says. "Many times kids loved it, and then if you were a teenager, or an adult, the thing to do was to hate the character."
Instant fame on the scale of Crazy Frog's can be ruinous, as creators are exposed to extreme levels of both praise and criticism.
The Crazy Frog team were so busy looking to capitalise on the success of the first song – they released a version of the classic 1969 instrumental 'Popcorn' just three months after 'Axel F' – that they didn't have a lot of time to let the opinions of others affect them.
"It didn't get to us that much," Söderberg says. "We were full-time concentrating on what we were doing next. So, the not-so-funny feedback we got, I guess we put that aside.
"We didn't do anything wrong! We did funny music videos."
Wicklund concedes his team's faith in the quality of their work was also vital in getting through the backlash.
"We've always had really good self-confidence, when it comes to the character and to the music video," he says.
"We want to make a nice little story, and it needs to be fun. It's all about our humour and our way of doing music videos, and I think that's one of the key strengths."
To be annoying is one thing. When you're annoying and inescapable – in every TV break, on the radio, and even out in regular life whenever mobile phones rang – the disdain becomes more poisonous.
"[Axel F] came with this package of mobile ring tones, which we never really liked," Söderberg says. "It was kind of shoved down people's throats. So, it was a mix of being very proud and being annoyed with the backlash we also got from it.
We just liked the character. It's a fun and lovable character. But since they showed it so many times on MTV and stuff like that, we got this backlash also.
"Nowadays, we don't have that at all because we got rid of those parts that we didn't like about the project. We got to focus on building this character as we want him to be and where he is now."
The nostalgia era
Yep, in case you didn't know, the Crazy Frog hasn't been squashed.
Recent years have seen a resurgence in the character's popularity, perhaps due to millennials exposing their kids to a slice of their youth, or maybe this damn frog just had more enduring appeal than we expected.
"It started to live again, and we were a bit surprised because [we thought] we had closed the chapter," Wicklund says.
"We were still very aware of the potential, how good a character it was, and the reach that it had, but we didn't think too much of it until we discovered that it was really taking off. That's when the nostalgia era started."
Crazy Frog clearly has lots of life left in it. At time of publishing, the Axel F video has 5 billion views on YouTube, with another 13 of its videos sitting at over 100 million views. It has half a million followers on TikTok, where short clips reach another broad audience.
Creative types tend to prefer looking to the future than reflecting, which can make for a challenging relationship with nostalgia. But Söderberg and Wicklund relish the chance to continue working on Crazy Frog, this time entirely on their own terms.
"We had time to prepare for what we wanted the character to be in a larger universe," Wicklund says.
"At the time, everything just happened, and we sort of went with it. We had this number one hit, and then came [second single] 'Popcorn'. We sort of just adapted to the situation.
"Now, we can do it the way we really want it. We are really thankful that we get a second opportunity to relive the character and really present it the way we want it."
Lessons from a frog
When it comes to learnings from the Crazy Frog experience, the two men agree on one simple takeaway: virality can't be manufactured.
"These things are very hard to plan," Söderberg says. "If you try to have this majestic plan for how to do it, it probably won't happen.
"There was no plan behind it from the start, it was a fun little project that exploded because everyone involved — from Erik that created the character to the guys that made the music, to us coming up with the Crazy Frog world and the music videos — was [doing it] all for fun and without expectations.
"That's when you can have something that really works because it really comes from the joy of creating something."
The team have since been approached by many clients seeking virality, and their answer is always the same.
"We get asked, 'We're thinking about creating a character that we want to go viral', and we're like, 'It doesn't work like that'," Wicklund says.
"It's really in the hands of the fans or the people who's going to watch it. There's something deep within the people that it sort of strikes a chord with, and then it just starts to move.
"It's very, very hard to do the analysis of what's going to work for people, because it's a combination of what's going on in society today, in everybody's life, what can you relate to.
"My tip is just really believing in your own talent and what you want to do, and just go with that. Create for yourself, foremost, and then hopefully somebody else will like it as well."
First published at ABC News Double J, January 4, 2024
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