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Food

Toto's 'Africa' Is Playing On Loop in a London Burger King All Day Today

Bless the rains and eat your Whopper, too.
Hilary Pollack
Los Angeles, US
Photos: Flickr user Mike Mozart and YouTube screenshot

How's your Tuesday going? Got any plans tonight? Thinking you'll be hearing any drums echoing? Maybe whispers of some quiet conversation? Some wild dogs crying out in the night?

If you're jonesing for a Whooper in Camden Town today, these are the lyrics that you'll hear cranking out of the Burger King location in that London neighborhood. That's because Burger King UK received quite a response to this tweet that it dropped a couple of days ago, garnering more than 5,600 likes and 6,500 replies:

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Well, internet people, it worked—not unlike the time web denizens (cough NOISEY cough) somehow successfully convinced Weezer to cover the same Toto tune by popular demand. (Because time is a flat circle, Toto has decided to return the favor by dropping a cover of "Hash Pipe" later this week.)

And thus, patrons of Burger King will find their rains blessed (while employees are probably ready to stick their heads in the chicken tender fryer by now).

It's unclear why, exactly, Burger King UK offered to loop the iconic track, although we have a feeling that the answer is "for attention, duh." (It could be worse—the chain could have changed its name to Pancake King in a move of extreme marketing thirst.)

There are numerous theories about how "Africa" became the internet's favorite song, but one way of summarizing them is as follows: The news cycle in 2018 feels bad. Nostalgia for simpler times and familiar things feels good. "Africa" is, perhaps, the audio epitome of the 80s, a time when many of the people tormented by political and environmental chaos now were innocent babies and children, and their only cares in the world were eating mush and rolling around on their parents' carpeted living room floors watching Sesame Street. "Africa" is, truly, comfort food.

I'll take a Whopper with cheese, a chocolate shake, some long forgotten words or ancient melodies, and, uh, a side of chicken nuggets. Now, if only we can get Taco Bell to blast "Rosanna" for a year straight.