"We Are Number One" is a song featured in the Icelandic children’s television series LazyTown. Written by composer Máni Svavarsson for the show’s fourth season, it appears in the episode titled "Robbie's Dream Team" (the twelfth episode of season four). The number was staged as a short, theatrical sequence for television and later circulated widely online as a standalone music video hosted on the programme’s official channels, where it achieved significant viewership.
Musical and visual characteristics
The song is performed on screen by the series’ antagonist, Robbie Rotten, played by actor Stefán Stefánsson. It is constructed as a lighthearted, tongue-in-cheek villain song: catchy, rhythmic, and deliberately theatrical. The televised sequence combines simple choreography, costume-based comedy and quick-cut edits; in the official clip Robbie is accompanied by several doppelgänger figures and stage props that amplify the comic villain persona. The style makes it easy to excerpt, loop and remix, which aided its later life on the internet.
Rise as an internet meme
Although released in 2014, the song’s popularity surged in 2016 when a remixed version was posted by the YouTube channel SiIvaGunner, a channel known for playful uploads that repurpose video game music and other media into unexpected remixes. That upload helped spark a wave of derivative works: pitch-shifted edits, sped-up and slowed-down variants, layered mashups, and comedic re-edits distributed across video-sharing and social platforms. Parallel uploads and parody material contributed to the song’s transformation from a children’s-show number to a broadly recognized meme reference within internet culture; sites and communities that archive and discuss memes and parody expanded the audience further.
Association with Stefán Stefánsson and fan responses
The actor who played Robbie, Stefán Stefánsson, became the focus of increased attention when he publicly announced a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer in 2016. Fans of the show and the meme community mobilized in multiple ways: fundraising drives, benefit performances, and online campaigns that used the song to raise awareness and express support. A high-profile petition sought to have Stefánsson perform "We Are Number One" as Iceland’s Eurovision entry in 2017; that petition accrued thousands of signatures and illustrated how internet fandoms can coalesce around both cultural artifacts and their creators. Coverage of his diagnosis and the ensuing public reaction appeared in press reports and community pages linked to the announcement here.
Legacy and notable facts
Beyond its life as a meme, "We Are Number One" stands as an example of how a short television sequence can be recontextualized through online remix culture. The official LazyTown upload of the song became one of the channel’s most-viewed items—reported to have tens of millions of views and identified by commentators as the programme’s top-performing video on its channel here. The song has been covered and remixed by amateur and professional musicians, and it remains a commonly cited case when writers discuss the mechanics of viral remixing, the interplay between children’s media and adult fandoms, and how fan communities rally in response to news about performers. The public petition that proposed Eurovision participation is recorded here, and is one among several grassroots actions that accompanied the song’s online prominence.
- Origins: written for LazyTown, composed by Máni Svavarsson.
- Performance: sung and acted by Stefán Stefánsson as Robbie Rotten.
- Internet life: remixes, parodies and meme formats boosted its reach.
- Fan activism: petitions and fundraisers connected to the actor’s illness.