Do you know the story behind "Sandstorm" by Darude ? Ever heard it ?

ABOUT

“Sandstorm” is a 1999 trance techno song by the Finnish electronic music producer Darude. Upon its release, the song instantly gained mainstream recognition and continues to remain relevant as a pre-game “pump-up” track before sporting events and background music for a wide range of videos hosted online, most notably during live-streamed sessions of the multiplayer arena game League of Legends (LoL) on Twitch.

ORIGIN

“Sandstorm” was released in Finland on November 15th, 1999, by 16 Inch Records[6]. In 2000, Darude released a music video for the track in which he is shown wearing headphones while witnessing two people chase a woman carrying a mysterious case (shown below).

Darude’s Response On the Spread of the Track

On January 15th, 2015, the electronic music news blog InTheMix[8] published an interview with Darude, in which he was asked about the online resurgence in popularity of “Sandstorm.” Darude responded by noting he had seen the song being mentioned on League of Legends discussion boards and that he was “weirded out by it at first.”

InTheMix: “There’s obviously been a resurgence of interest due to internet phenomena; when did you start to see that happen?”

Darude: "It’s a thing, wherever I go and play somewhere, it’s usually requested, or the promoter asks if I’m going to play Sandstorm. I understand that people do come to my shows because that’s what they know best. I’ve seen the chatter on these boards for games like League Of Legends, and gamers are a lot of the reason there has been this renewed interest.

I don’t know when it started, but seeing it online where someone asks “song name?” and now somebody always replies “Darude – ‘Sandstorm’” or all these variations, I see it all over my YouTube pages. I was weirded out by it at first, I didn’t understand what was going on. It was strange. Now I’ve actually played a couple of gamer conferences, all related to that kind of stuff. I’m cool with that, I’m not going to be pissed off about someone spreading my name and the name of my track around, whether it’s a joke, or a meme, it works for me."

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