Listen: ‘Call Me Maybe’ Looped 147 Times

Introducing the remix that could finally kill Carly Rae Jepsen's indomitable earworm.

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Chris Young / The Canadian Press / AP

Carly Rae Jepsen performs during the 2012 Much Music Video Awards in Toronto on Sunday, June 17, 2012

If you’ve stood in any reasonable proximity to a music-emitting device this summer, you’ve almost certainly been exposed to Carly Rae Jepsen’s chart-busting hit “Call Me Maybe.” (Sorry — just reading that sentence made you start humming it, didn’t it?) After all, the track is the definition of the word earworm, sitting atop the Billboard Hot 100 chart for the fourth week in a row and beating out established acts Maroon 5 and Katy Perry. The song has been remixed, lip-synced, mashed-up, and unplugged, sung hundreds of times by celebrities and commoners of all calibers. So what more could an artist add, now, in July, more than six months after the song was catapulted to viral fame?

Well, if you’re Dan Deacon, electronic music guru and synthesizer sorcerer, you’d fashion a way to take “Call Me Maybe” to a new level. Make that 147 “Call Me Maybes.” Deacon, who prefers to perform in the middle of his audience to maximize participation and atmosphere, has unveiled his very tellingly-named “Call Me Maybe Acapella 147 Times Exponentially Layered.”

(WATCH: Obama Sings ‘Call Me Maybe’ (Sort Of))

This is not a remix for the dance club set but a dense, recursive blast of migraine-inducing noise that will have the crowds fleeing, hands plastered over their ears in futility.  It’s also the singular track that – dare we say it – could cause “Call Me Maybe” to finally jump the shark. Somehow, we’re okay hearing it 147 times straight through, but when you pile them all on top of each other, the clock seems to halt and you’re suddenly aware of just how grating the song is. It starts off luring you in with its sexy hooks, but by the end of the nearly five-minute track, it has devolved into straight mush. Sort of like our feelings about the song.

The layered version is part of a collection of 43 remixes of Carly Rae Jepsen’s tune and by far the oddest one on the list, despite appearing alongside submissions by artists with names like DJ Colostomy Bag.

It’s available for purchase on Bandcamp’s website, where you can name your own price if your brain is still able to manage normal functions after the scrambling effect of Deacon’s opus. But as one fan noted in reply to Deacon’s tweet: “THE MAXIMUM NAME YOUR PRICE IS NOT HIGH ENOUGH FOR HOW MUCH I WANT TO PAY FOR THIS.” That sounds about right: buy this one, and you’ll have enough “Call Me Maybe” to last you a lifetime.

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