What the ‘saxophones getting louder’ meme does to our brain

You’re reading the opening sentence of this article - but the saxophones keep getting louder.

Sounds familiar? It’s a TikTok trend that’s gone viral this year where an everyday situation is made to sound more dramatic as the saxophones on the soundtrack slowly grow in volume and urgency.

It’s been used on vids of people washing their make-up off, conquering their fear of heights, and even used by the official London Transport account to show passengers what happens if they try to dodge their fares.

But why is this particular music, and others you may have heard on socials, used in the background of thousands of online videos? BBC Bitesize Other Side of the Story took a closer look - and listen…

Where does the saxophone solo come from?

In 1991, the award-winning film Boyz n the Hood focused on the lives of members of a gang living in Los Angeles, California. In one dramatic scene, a character called Ricky is chased by members of another gang. During the pursuit, tense saxophone music plays in the background, building up until the action reaches a heartbreaking climax.

More than 30 years later, that memorable moment from the film’s score resurfaced as the music to many memes where, jokingly or seriously, the action builds to some sort of climax.

Why do we love memes so much, anyway?

The way our brains make sense of what we see and hear can sometimes need untangling, so we contacted Dr Niklas Ihssen from the department of psychology at Durham University, who specialises in social media.

He explained there are a “couple of things” going on with the ‘saxophones getting louder’ meme that makes it popular, although the first has more to do with viral memes in general.

“We love to be part of a trend,” said Dr Ihssen. “We love to be similar to others in some ways, even though we also like our individuality, but seeing and being part of a big group of people who think the same way, then you also like it.

“This contribution to something huge, feeling part of that community, that just helps us to overcome our fear of being alone in the world in a way.”

Why does the music in memes make us think a certain way?

Talking more specifically, Dr Ihssen said: “With this particular meme, there’s a lot about anticipation and expectation. The human brain is a prediction machine - every time we see something, we try to predict what happens next.”

He continued: “You have this music and I think many people know this is associated with something in the movie, something tragic. So you predict this, you know something will happen, you wait for it - through the saxophones getting louder - and then it happens. That’s the big moment. You know it will be something.”

If that ‘big moment’ with a sax soundtrack happens to be somebody burning a cake they’ve just baked, there’s a reason we find this funny. It’s about putting two things together which are opposites - something Dr Ihssen called ‘script opposition’. It’s how punchlines to jokes often work, where a story goes in a different direction at the end to catch us out and to make us laugh.

What other memes use well-known music in this way?

It isn’t just the Boyz N the Hood moment that has gone on to viral fame, there are other examples of film and TV music making it big in memes.

• Curb Your Enthusiasm. Officially titled Frolic, this piece of music composed in 1974 by the Italian musician Luciano Michelini has been used on memes that show awkward moments and interactions - the premise on which the series is built. According to a 2019 article on the website Screen Rant, Michelini enjoyed his work getting a new life, but Curb Your Enthusiasm star Larry David wasn’t so impressed.

• Law & Order. The US TV crime series set in New York has a distinctive theme tune with a ‘dun-dun’ sound at the start that has been used in all sorts of memes. They range from pretending everyday moments will be crimes investigated by the show’s characters, to people showing off their dance moves to the full theme tune.

• Jaws. Those memorable two notes created by composer John Williams for Steven Spielberg's 1975 hit Jaws let audiences know when a shark was due to appear in the waters and potentially attack. On TikTok, it still has that scary film feel but again, script opposition comes into play as the video could be a member of staff waiting in the background to offer information or a small pet about to jump from behind the sofa.

This article was published in August 2026

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