I love a good jingle, and over its lifetime Windows has had quite a few very good jingles. Like Apple's iconic startup sound, many iterations of Windows have had their own earworm tunes during boot-up. I'll be honest—I don't think I could remember many of them offhand, but as soon as I hear them, the image of my Windows 95 or 2000 or XP desktop comes flooding back. Properly replicating those sound effects with my mouth feels like an impossible task, though, which is why I can't stop watching this 28 second video of Korean acapella group MayTree doing just that. They're so accurate it's frankly a little unsettling.
This is weird, right? This group of five extremely mouth-talented people got together and decided, for fun, to precisely recreate the sound effect that plays when Windows XP boots up. I sort of get that, though, because you could have a lot of nostalgia for Windows XP. That was the era of computing that a lot of 20- and 30-somethings first started using the internet regularly or had PCs of their own. It was a big, next-gen jump from Windows 95 and 98.
Then, at the 11 second mark, they perfectly emulate the sound effect of plugging in a USB device. Who has nostalgia for plugging in USB cables? How did they so perfectly nail that do doo bit in the middle? It's a travesty that the video is so short. I need that Windows 95 startup too, MayTree. I need it!
MayTree has apparently been around since the year 2000, and has years worth of videos on its YouTube channel. As you'd expect from any acapella group, their performances are all impressive, wholesome, and deeply cheesy.
There are original songs and covers, but sadly this brief Windows montage seems to be their first foray into eerily accurate sound effects. I hope it's the start of a trend. In the meantime, here's a cover of Mario Bros. themes that are guaranteed to lodge themselves in your head for several days. Don't miss the part where they replicate the sound Mario makes when he's swimming. 👌
