RIP Eduard Khil: Trololo Man (1934-2012)

The man who launched a thousand memes, and took Youtube by storm some 30 years after performing a wordless song for Russian TV has died. Eduard Khil - the People's Artist of Russia - who is better known to Western audiences and internet fans the world over as the "Trololo Man," passed away this morning in St. Petersburg, after being hospitalized at the Polenov Neurosurgical Institute by a stroke in early April. 77 year old Khil was born 4th Septermber 1934, in Smolensk, suffering a difficult childhood that saw his parents split up and him ending up in a children's home after his kindergarten was bombed and he was separated from his mother during evacuation. Reunited with his mother after the war, he eventually graduated printing college and embarked on a classical music education at the Leningrad Conservatory. After graduation in 1960, Khil fell in love with pop music, and up to 1974 was awarded a number of prestigious titles by the Former Soviet Union: in 1968 the Meritorious Artist of the RSFSR; in 1971 the Order of the Red Banner of Labour; and most prestigious of all in 1974 the People's Artist of Russia. He was a beloved symbol of the Soviet Union thanks to songs such as "Loggers," "The Moonstone," "Blue City," and "From Where the Motherland Begins," and enjoyed a revival in his popularity back in 2010 when his wordless version of an American-like cowboy song "I'm Very Glad That I'm Finally Coming Home" took the internet by storm. The song had originally been deemed un-Soviet in its lyrical form, and Khil's wordless vocal performance led to his "Trololo Man" nickname in the wake of the video's popularity on Youtube. Khil reportedly enjoyed the revival, and took to performing the song live once more, giving Life News his reaction to the song's unlikely recent popularity:

I haven't heard anything about it. It's nice, of course! Thanks for good news! There is a backstory about this song. Originally, we had lyrics written for this song but they were poor. I mean, they were good, but we couldn't publish them at that time. They contained words like these: "I'm riding my stallion on a prairie, so-and-so mustang, and my beloved Mary is thousand miles away knitting a stocking for me". Of course, we failed to publish it at that time, and we, Arkady Ostrovsky and I, decided to make it a vocalisation. But the essence remained in the title. The song is very playful €“ it has no lyrics, so we had to make up something for people would listen to it, and so this was an interesting arrangement.

Here's the man himself, performing the song this year: http://youtu.be/PL8CD8PjVmA RIP Eduard Khil. The internet would not have