From soft-rock smash to karaoke staple to Internet bait, the shelf life of Toto’s 1982 smash “Africa” has reached remarkable, unexpected lengths.
Perhaps it’s finally reached its logical conclusion with one multimedia artist’s new sound installation, which plays the 1982 smash on loop until the end of time deep in the, er, coastal Namib Desert.
Namibian-German artist Max Siedentopf installed “Toto Forever” late last December while back home with his family in Namibia. Six speakers are placed atop individual plinths and attached to an MP3 player that contains only the song; the entire thing is powered by solar energy with the promise that it will run “for all eternity.”
He writes that he was inspired by the online resurgence of interest in the song, spurred on by benevolent Twitter bots, a Reddit page dedicated to the song, and unexpected covers from pop artists spanning from Pitbull to the rascals in Weezer. (The latter cover, with a just-as-silly video starring “Weird Al” Yankovic, was the band’s first single to top Billboard‘s Alternative Songs chart in more than a decade.)