The first time I tried to sing “All Star” at karaoke, I bombed. It lives in a weird range for me—too low or high depending on the octave I choose. But it didn’t matter. The bar flipped its shit when it came on. The song had been out for eight years at that point, but nobody could keep from smiling as they screamed the lyrics back at me.

Now, 18 years since the song’s release, and 16 years post-Shrek, the song seems to be permanently embedded in popular culture. This is perhaps no better represented than through the hundreds of "All Star" mashups, covers, and parodies online. There’s an entire Reddit group, r/smashups, dedicated to them, that’s been running strong for at least three years at this point.

“All Star” has cemented its place as the bad, corny song from a decade full of bad, corny songs—the ultimate in pre-9/11 fluff pop. And yet, it’s impossible to be cynical about it. Though its meme-ification may have been driven by irony, it was quickly absorbed by the pure joy and fun the song exudes. “All Star” argues that everything fun is good, and sarcasm can’t touch it. With “All Star,” all that glitters is gold.

It’s impossible to know why something becomes a meme. Before Shrek, “All Star” was a hit in its own right, and also featured on the soundtrack for Mystery Men. But perhaps it being featured on the Shrek soundtrack two years later, after we had already agreed on what a weird and bad song this was, reinvigorated everyone’s sense of “oh my god, why does this song exist?” It just wouldn’t go away. So the jokes started coming and they won’t stop coming.

The internet generally agrees that the first “All Star” parody was “Mario, You’re a Plumber” in 2009, and that it hit a new level of popularity after internet wunderkind Neil Cicirega used the song as the centerpiece for his album Mouth Sounds. But many “All Star” artists found out about the mashups and parodies well after that.

“I first found an 'All Star' mashup about 3 years ago,” Daniel Cosgrove, 21, told GQ over email. Cosgrove, also known as DXFalcon, is a student and DJ living in Scotland whose mashup of “All Star” with “X Gon’ Give It To Ya” is one of the top “smashups” on Reddit. Cosgrove had been listening to the two songs back to back (what is this amazing playlist?), and noticed they had similar BPMs. “The response I saw to the track in the first 48 hours and in the following weeks were unbelievably positive, which really motivated me to get to work on more mashups and, a little later on, get into DJing.”

Joe Jenkins, 16, acknowledges that “All Star” is older than he is, but he was still captivated by it. Jenkins started on YouTube doing piano covers of different songs, and a friend dared him to do a cover on a $1 piano. “I decided to play ‘All Star’ on it, and uploaded that to YouTube. A few weeks later, it began to blow up at a ridiculous rate, so I quickly tried to catch on its success by making more ‘All Star’ videos. Out of nowhere, that became my 'thing'.” Now, he’s recorded multiple weird cover versions of “All Star,” including playing it on the literal sharpest tool in his shed, or with his finger and his thumb in the shape of an L on his forehead.

Cosgrove theorizes that it’s had such longevity as a meme because it is the ultimate pop-rock anthem of anyone who grew up watching Shrek, which itself has its own meme life. Anyone making mashups or YouTube videos is just the right age for Shrek to have been their childhood movie. “Now people who were of of similar age as I was when Shrek came out have grown up and started seeing such ‘dank memes’ as the classic 4chan greentext story 'Shrek Is Love, Shrek Is Life,' and they are being inspired to make their own Shrek memes and mashups,” he said. It hits the right balance of silliness and nostalgia, the way RickRolling and He-Man singing “What’s Up” did.