2000s The term "nightcore" was first used in 2001 as the name for a school project by
Norwegian DJ duo Thomas S. Nilsen and Steffen Ojala Søderholm, known by their stage names DJ TNT and DJ SOS respectively. The duo set a template of a track in the style: a 25–30% speed-up (commonly to around 160 to 180
beats per minute) of a
trance or
Eurodance song. Nightcore made five albums of sped-up versions of
trance recordings, including its 2002 thirteen-track debut album
Energized and the group's later albums
Summer Edition 2002, ''L'hiver
, Sensación
and Caliente''. The group's first album was made with
eJay, while all of its later work was made with what the duo described as "top-secret" programs. From there, the music rose in popularity with more people applying the nightcore treatment to more non-dance genres such as
pop music and
hip hop. Many of the pioneer uploaders of nightcore including Maikel631 have called these non-dance edits "fake". A
Thump writer described it as the "groundwork for some of the most innovative club music today" and wrote that it also led to a number of "awful"
internet memes: Dance Music Northwest described nightcore as "too catchy, too danceable, and far too much fun to not welcome into the dance music mainstream." Nightcore has also gone under the more transparent name of "sped-up." In 2022, a notable example was setting the dance routine performed by
the titular character of the
Netflix comedy horror series
Wednesday to a nightcore version of the song "
Bloody Mary" by
Lady Gaga. The use of the song and fan recreations became a
viral phenomenon on video sharing service
TikTok and led to Netflix using the nightcore version in the announcement trailer for the show's second season. In turn,
major recording labels began releasing official sped-up remixes, gaining millions of streams. They either started releasing three versions (normal, sped-up, and slowed) of a track at the same time, or started curating popular
Spotify playlists for sped-up versions of
hit singles released specifically on their label (such as
Warner Music Group). ==See also==