He-Man Sings (HEYYEYAAEYAAAEYAEYAA)

Origin: Slackcircus and a 1993 rock single

The video was made by animators at Slackcircus Studios, who cut footage of He-Man from the 1983 cartoon He-Man and the Masters of the Universe to 4 Non Blondes’ 1992 single “What’s Up?” — the one whose chorus is a full-throated “and I say hey-yeah-yeah-yeah.” Rather than subtitle it, the edit re-animates He-Man’s mouth so the Prince Adam of Eternia appears to belt out the song himself, arms swinging, while Battle Cat and the cast look on.

The creators have said the project was inspired by Eric Fensler’s G.I. Joe PSA edits, the other great mid-2000s exercise in redubbing 1980s cartoons into surrealism. The original file was posted to the Something Awful forums on May 8, 2005, under the title “Fabulous Secret Powers” — a lift from the show’s own opening narration.

From Something Awful to a YouTube monster

For five years the clip circulated as a forum curiosity. Its second life began in November 2010, when a trimmed two-minute cut — intro, outro and dialogue stripped, leaving only the song — was uploaded to YouTube under the transcribed title “HEYYEYAAEYAAAEYAEYAA.” That version became the canonical one, passing 30 million views by early 2013 and, per Wikipedia’s account of the song, going on to accumulate around 230 million views, several times more than the “Fabulous Secret Powers” original.

The unpronounceable title is doing real work. It is a phonetic transcription of a chorus, which means it is impossible to guess what a link points to — the perfect setup for a prank.

The bait-and-switch

That is exactly how it was used. Alongside Rickrolling, HEYYEYAAEYAAAEYAEYAA became a standard decoy link: post it as if it were a news story, a tutorial or a sports highlight, and watch the replies fill with people who just got He-Manned. It travelled especially well on forums and in comment sections where the URL slug was visible but meaningless.

The clip also seeded a whole remix ecology:

• “but every time they say Hey it gets faster” edits, one of the earliest examples of the escalating-remix format.
• Character swaps that graft the animation onto other cartoon and anime figures.
• Live covers and karaoke recreations that treat the meme version, not the 4 Non Blondes video, as the reference.

Legacy

The meme quietly changed the fortunes of the source material. “What’s Up?” was already a global hit — UK number 2, US Billboard Hot 100 number 14 — but its YouTube afterlife is inseparable from He-Man, and the official music video passed two billion views in October 2025. Ask anyone under 35 to sing the chorus and you are as likely to get a cartoon barbarian impression as a Linda Perry one.

The joke has proved durable enough to be acknowledged by the franchise itself: the 2026 live-action Masters of the Universe film, directed by Travis Knight, was reported to include a nod to the meme, an unusual case of a rights-holder tipping its hat to twenty years of unlicensed editing.

How to use it

Modern usage is almost entirely referential: dropping “HEYYEYAAEYAAAEYAEYAA” as a reply, using the audio over any triumphant slow-motion footage, or linking it to someone who has never seen it. It is a fossil of the era when the funniest thing on the internet was a cartoon character singing the wrong song with total conviction.