'One, Two, Buckle My Shoe' Is Suddenly All Over TikTok, and It's Pretty Weird

No matter how old you are, it's easy to get confused by what's happening on TikTok. The platform is filled with videos that build on one another, and if you don't have the right entry point, you can find yourself watching videos that don't seem to make a lick of sense.

Recently, the song "One, Two, Buckle My Shoe" has begun to appear in videos, and you may be confused about why.

"One, Two, Buckle My Shoe" is showing up in videos on TikTok now, but the song's origins are hundreds of years old. The song was first heard in the 18th century, and has been passed down over the years so that it's now one of the most famous nursery rhymes in the English language. The song has also shown up on kids' shows like Barney, helping to cement it as one of the first songs many children learn.

Today, the song's lyrics can feel a bit anachronistic, especially since most shoes no longer feature a buckle. The song has endured anyway, in part because of TikTok teens who want to make fun of it in videos. "One, Two, Buckle My Shoe" has started to pop up in TikTok videos, including in one popular video where a person listens to the song and begins to levitate thanks to the song's sheer power.

The original audio for the trend comes from a video in which a teenage boy shows off his new shoes, which feature buckles. This version features the lyrics "One, Two, Buckle My Shoe / Three, Four, Buckle Some More / Five, Six, Nike kicks."

In addition to the song itself, the audio has caught on in part because the singing is quite nasally in a way that is both funny and slightly grating.

That original video was so popular that its sound has now been repurposed to accompany a wide variety of other videos. This sometimes happens when a particular sound is trending, in part because it allows other videos to gain a wider audience if they're already using a popular sound. More generally, though, people just seem to be really into this silly track that repurposes a popular nursery song.

In part, that's likely because it's a song that almost everyone knows, whether they heard it on Barney or had to sing it in school. Few songs so perfectly capture a particular moment in so many people's lives, and this silly repurposing is a reminder that that stuff sticks with us, even if we don't think it will.

Of course, the video is also just silly and fun, and people like to spread joy on TikTok whenever they can. Even as some users worry about what the ultimate fate of the app might be in the U.S., there are plenty of people who just go on it every day for a laugh, and thankfully, they can usually find them.