Steklovata (Novi God)

The band and the song

Steklovata is a Russian band with four members, known for a single hit — the song "New Year." According to the catalog, most of the members did not go on to have music careers on a scale comparable to this song, but the track itself became firmly established in internet culture.

The song became recognizable thanks to its simple melody and everyday lyrics, which were perceived as a typical description of New Year's celebrations in a provincial setting. It was precisely this "simplicity" that became the basis for most of the parodies.

Judging by the catalog's description, the band's members were young, and the recording itself had an amateur origin, which set it apart from the professional pop music of the time. This combination of modest technical means and a sincere performing style apparently explains why the track was perceived as both naive and touching.

The video

The music video was shot in an informal setting against a dark backdrop with blue and yellow flashes of light. The article's illustration is a frame from this video, showing four young men standing next to each other in jackets and sweaters. The description of their appearance is given here only to identify the frame and carries no value judgment.

The video stood out for its amateur aesthetic, which over time became part of its memetic image. It was the visual style, not just the song, that made it recognizable in parodies and collages.

Popularity and parodies

The song and the video spread widely online, and the image of "typical Russian guys in sweaters" became the subject of parodies around the world, as the catalog notes. Parodies appeared as videos, photo edits, and social media posts.

Individual organizations used parodies as a format for New Year's greetings. For example, the sports club Lokomotiv-Kuban greeted fans with a parody of Steklovata's hit, which shows how far the song's fame spread beyond the internet.

Remake and reinterpretation

The band returned to the video. At the end of 2019, media reported that the group had recreated the iconic video for the song "New Year" in a reshoot. A remake was released later, which the press discussed as a parody of the band's own earlier video.

This reinterpretation showed that the meme continues to live on even after its initial wave of popularity. The band's engagement with its own material became a separate part of the meme's history and sparked discussion in the media.

It seems the decision to return to the material was driven by the band's wish to remind a new audience — one that grew up on the memes rather than on the original broadcast of the video — of itself. This move also allowed the band to set the tone of the discussion itself, rather than remaining merely the subject of other people's jokes.

Origin

The exact date the song and video were created has not been established from open sources. The "2008" tag in the catalog indicates the year the meme became noticeable. The search did not turn up details about the band's original lineup or about how the song reached a wide internet audience.

So details about the original lineup and about the process of making the video are not given in the article. What is reliably known is only that the song and video became a meme, and that the band later returned to reinterpret them.