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The "Are ya winnin' son" meme has been around since 2014, but recently it has grown into a viral music format with dozens of videos getting millions of views. Today we talk with Are Ya Listen, one of the biggest accounts using this format, about how they do it differently. Are Ya Listen has always believed that listening to a song is just half the experience, so they create custom music video-like visuals for each song they cover. Creating powerful video edits and synchronized lyric videos that focus on the visceral feeling of the song.

Find their account below and keep reading to see the full interview.

Interview with Are Ya Listen

How did you come up with the idea for Are Ya Listening, is there any story attached to that?

"It all started one evening when I was hanging out with friends and scrolling through our phones. I kept coming across the “Are You Listening?” meme, but most of the content I saw focused on the meme itself. I started thinking, What if I built a character around this idea and used it to
create music edits? I began experimenting with editing and syncing the characters to the music. Then another idea came to me: what if I created a unique visual experience for every song, matching the background,
lyrics, transitions, and overall atmosphere to what you hear? That small thought completely changed the direction of the project. I posted my first video on Instagram, and it went viral, surpassing a million views overnight. I gained
a huge number of followers, and seeing how people responded to the concept made me even more passionate about developing it. My early videos were much simpler, with basic effects and less precise synchronization. Over time, I taught myself new techniques and started paying closer attention to the details of each track.

Today, I build my edits around the song itself, syncing transitions and visual changes to different bass and treble sections, emphasizing lyrics, and translating the emotions of the music into visuals. I want every edit to feel like its own experience rather than just a video playing over a song.

As the page grew, opportunities came that I never would have imagined when I first started. I've worked with established marketing agencies, and one of the most surreal experiences was getting noticed by Breaking Benjamin. We ended up creating a collaboration video together, following each other on Instagram, and chatting. Their music was something I'd listened to since childhood, so having that connection through something I created myself was an incredible feeling.

That journey made me realize how far a small idea can take you. Today, Are Ya Listening has grown to over 260,000 followers and millions of monthly views. Seeing artists and well-known people watch and share my videos still makes me happy. What started as an experiment has become something I'm genuinely proud of, and I want to keep pushing the concept further."

How do you go about picking songs for your content? Are there specific things you listen for?

"My followers know my videos for their explosive moments. When I'm choosing a song, one of the main things I listen for is a bass drop, a sudden build-up, or a shift in intensity that creates a strong emotional impact. I want to find that moment where the music really hits and synchronize it with the “Are Ya Listening, Son?” moment in the video. Sometimes, I'll even make small adjustments to the track itself to achieve the right impact. High-energy rock and metal songs often have these moments naturally, but I don't limit myself to those genres. I can create the same feeling with many different types of music, as long as there's something in the track that I can translate into a powerful visual experience. Tame Impala's “Let It Happen,” for example, is a great example of how that feeling can work outside traditional rock or metal.

There's also a community aspect to how I choose the songs. I organize my videos into an “EP.” series, with each post having its own episode number and song title. Rather than choosing every track myself, I ask my followers to suggest songs in the comments. Sometimes I'll randomly pick a suggestion, and other times I'll choose the comment with the most likes. I also share the selected person's comment in my Instagram Stories so people can see whose suggestion made it into an episode.

For me, the community is just as important as the content itself. I want people to feel that they're part of what I'm building, not just an audience watching from the sidelines. A lot of pages don't highlight individual followers in that way, but I want to give credit to the people who support me. We're growing together, and I want that to remain part of the identity of Are Ya Listening. Ultimately, I'm looking for a musical moment that makes people feel something, while giving my audience a say in the music we experience together."

Do you have experience with visual content outside of Are Ya Listen? Do you have any other art you're working on currently?

"I'm actually a software engineer by background, but I've been managing social media pages since high school. Over the years, I've developed my skills in video editing, illustration, and digital content creation through hands-on experience.

Before Are Ya Listening, I managed several gaming pages focused on titles like League of Legends and Among Us, among others. Those projects gave me valuable experience, but I never committed to them as consistently as I have to Are Ya Listen. This one felt different. It became more than just another social media page; it became a bridge between me and the people who connect with the music and visuals I create. Currently, I'm expanding the project beyond Instagram videos by designing and sharing GIFs featuring the Are Ya Listening character across different social media platforms. It's exciting to see people using these GIFs in their own posts and conversations, and millions of people have already started using them.

I like the idea that the character can exist beyond my own videos and become something people use to express themselves online. It's another way to bring the identity of Are Ya Listening into internet culture, and I'd love to continue developing that side of the project alongside the music edits."

Were you the first account to do the Are Ya Listening Son idea, or did you evolve it?

"There were one or two other accounts using a similar “Are Ya Listening, Son?” concept when I started, so I wouldn't claim to have invented the original meme. What I wanted to do was take the idea in a completely different direction and build something more elaborate around it. Some of the other accounts used relatively simple formats, such as placing automatically generated song lyrics over a static image. I wanted to create something much more immersive. I draw and color the characters myself, build the room layouts and backgrounds from scratch, and
manually synchronize the lyrics with the music, adjusting the positioning, colors, transitions, and effects along the way.

Every song becomes its own vertical music video, with visuals designed specifically around that track. It's a very hands-on process, and a lot of work goes into even the smallest details. I want the visuals to feel like they belong to the music rather than simply being something playing in the background. That's what I believe sets Are Ya Listening apart. The original meme gave me the starting point, but the format I've developed around it is my own creative interpretation. I genuinely love putting that work into every episode, and seeing my followers respond to the details and effort makes it worthwhile."

How do you feel that visual content editing can change the way people experience music?

"I think visual editing can completely change the way someone experiences a song. Music already has the power to make you feel something, but when you combine it with visuals that match the lyrics, the rhythm, and the emotion of the track, you can take that experience to another level. For me, it's about translating what I hear into something people can see. A bass drop, a change in intensity, or a particular lyric can mean so much more when the visuals emphasize that exact
moment. I want people to feel the impact of the music, not just hear it. Sometimes, the right visual can even make you pay attention to a lyric or a detail in a song that you might have overlooked before.

I also think visual content can help people discover music in a different way. Someone might come across one of my videos without knowing the song or the artist, connect with the moment I've created, and end up listening to the full track. That's one of the things I love most about what I do: creating a visual experience that makes someone want to explore the music further. Ultimately, I don't see the visuals as something separate from the song. I see them as another way
of expressing what the artist has already created. My goal is to make the music and the visuals feel so connected that, for a moment, you can't imagine one without the other."

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Megadeth Back To The Beginning absence, explained: they were never asked. Dave Mustaine says the band didn’t know Ozzy Osbourne’s farewell concert existed until the lineup was already set, and only heard about it when a story broke that one act had been dropped for demanding money for the charity show. ‘That was not us,’ he says. ‘We were over in Europe playing.’ He is, fifteen months later, entirely gracious about the Osbournes, who he says ‘were there for me’ through cancer. It’s the rest of the music business he has a problem with: ‘They’re just afraid to come up and talk to me. I don’t know, it’s kinda lame.’

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‘That Was Not Us’: Why Megadeth Missed Villa Park

Speaking to Metal Hammer, Mustaine said Megadeth were not invited to Back To The Beginning and weren’t aware of it until the bill had been assembled, learning of the show through reports that an unnamed band had been dropped for asking to be paid.

Back To The Beginning was the biggest one-day bill in metal history: Metallica, Guns N’ Roses, Tool, Slayer, Pantera and a dozen more at Villa Park in Birmingham on July 5, 2025, with Ozzy on his throne for the last songs he ever sang in public. He died seventeen days later. Megadeth, a band that owes as much to Sabbath as any thrash act alive, were not there, and fans noticed.

Mustaine’s account is simple. ‘What we had heard was some scuttlebutt in one of the bands, and they never said who it was, they had asked for an exorbitant amount of money,’ he said. ‘And I guess that was something that was in really bad form. I don’t know any more about it, but that was not us. We were over in Europe playing.’

That’s the whole explanation, and it’s worth reading carefully. It isn’t a feud. It isn’t a scheduling conflict he turned down. The call never came, and the first he heard of the show was a rumor about somebody else behaving badly. For a man whose history with Metallica, the semi-headliners that night, is the most famous grudge in the genre, he’s conspicuously not making it about that.

Roses For Sharon: Why There’s No Grudge

Mustaine said he would ‘do anything’ for Sharon Osbourne, who organized the show, because the Osbournes reached out to him during his 2019 throat cancer treatment, and he’d done the same for her in 2002.

‘I’m all about that, because they were there for me,’ he said. When Sharon was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2002, ‘I sent her a bunch of roses and said get well soon because of her kindness.’ When his own diagnosis became public in June 2019, the Osbournes were among the first to get in touch. ‘I thought it was really commendable.’

The show raised an estimated six to seven million pounds for Birmingham Children’s Hospital, Acorns Children’s Hospice and Cure Parkinson’s, and an edited concert film reaches theaters next week. Mustaine’s position is that none of that is diminished by Megadeth’s absence, and he isn’t asking anyone to feel bad about it.

‘A Self-Ostracised Loner’: The Part Where He Doesn’t Hold Back

The edge in the interview isn’t aimed at the Osbournes. It’s aimed at an industry Mustaine says keeps its distance: ‘They’re just afraid to come up and talk to me. I don’t know, it’s kinda lame.’

He doesn’t, he said, ‘have a lot of guys that I’ve kept up with in the music business.’ Then: ‘I feel like a self-ostracised loner, sometimes.’ From a man who co-founded Metallica, built one of thrash’s Big Four from the wreckage of being fired from it, and has spent forty-three years being the most quotable person in the room, it’s a strikingly plain admission.

The memoir extract Metal Hammer ran alongside the interview sharpens it. Writing about James Hetfield calling him in 2019, Mustaine says: ‘Hearing from him just as I was about to begin treatment, when I was at a pretty low point, meant a lot to me.’ And then, to everyone who didn’t call: ‘Be a human being.’ Pick up the phone, he writes. Reach out, privately, one to one. The Villa Park snub reads differently with that beside it. He wasn’t angry he missed the show. He noticed, again, who didn’t pick up the phone.

Will Megadeth Get A Farewell Show Of Their Own?

Asked whether Megadeth might stage their own star-studded send-off, Mustaine said he’d ‘love to do something like that’ but worries it would be ‘a little self-serving,’ adding that ‘it’d have to be done with grace and style, like the Osbournes.’

So: probably not, and if it happens, not soon. The farewell is the tour itself. ‘I love the idea of what we’re doing: touring,’ he said. That’s consistent with how Mustaine has run the band for four decades, and with a career in which the biggest moments were usually ones he engineered rather than ones he was invited to.

The bar he set, ‘grace and style, like the Osbournes,’ is also a tell. He watched Back To The Beginning from Europe and came away not bitter about the guest list but impressed by the execution. If anyone in his circle wants to give him the night Ozzy got, that’s the brief.

Where The Megadeth Farewell Stands

Megadeth’s seventeenth and final album, Megadeth, was released in January 2026 and became the first record in the band’s history to top the Billboard 200; the farewell tour began last summer and continues through the UK and Europe in March and April 2027 with Black Label Society and Testament.

The self-titled record closes a run that started with Killing Is My Business in 1985, and it’s a strange kind of justice that the band’s only No. 1 album is the last one. The memoir, In My Darkest Hour, was published by Da Capo last month and went straight onto the New York Times bestseller list; it’s Mustaine’s second book, and the one about the cancer.

The 2027 European leg runs as follows. US fans who want to see the band one more time should watch this page: North American farewell dates beyond the 2026 run haven’t been announced.

Note the March 18 date: Birmingham. Megadeth will play Ozzy’s hometown eight months after they weren’t invited to his farewell there.

TL;DR

• Dave Mustaine says Megadeth were never asked to play Back To The Beginning and didn’t know about it until the lineup was set; they were touring Europe.
• He wants it on record that the band reportedly dropped for demanding payment ‘was not us,’ calling that behavior ‘really bad form.’
• No grudge toward the Osbournes: he’d ‘do anything’ for Sharon, who reached out during his 2019 cancer treatment; he sent her roses during hers in 2002.
• The sharp words are for the industry: ‘They’re just afraid to come up and talk to me. It’s kinda lame.’ ‘I feel like a self-ostracised loner, sometimes.’
• A Megadeth all-star farewell show is unlikely; he calls the idea ‘a little self-serving.’ The final album topped the Billboard 200 in January; the farewell tour hits the UK and Europe in March–April 2027, including Birmingham on March 18.

FAQ

Loaded Radio covers hard rock and heavy metal news every day, with The Metal Breakdown Daily on the free Loaded Radio app for Apple iOS and Google Play. Follow Loaded Radio for every stop of the Megadeth farewell.

The post Megadeth Were Completely Shut Out of Sabbath’s Final Show — And Dave Mustaine Isn’t Holding Back appeared first on Loaded Radio.

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Prolific Swedish speed metal quintet Armory are flying the genre’s flag on their fourth album, Echoes of the Astrolith. Coming just a year after their Black Star EP, Echoes features Armory’s new singer, C. Rostoff, who has the pipes to match the band’s ’80s-style ambitions and swagger.

The album, which you can listen to below, doesn’t break new ground so much as it rips into familiar territory with fervor and glee. Guitarists N. Ingelman and A. Holmström are a ripping pair, utilizing a twin-guitar approach that lets the songs soar without giving up speed. On songs like “The Final Invention,” they slow things down into darker, brooding territory, which is a welcome juxtaposition to the solos of “Pillars of Fire” or the divebombs of “Cosmic Dreams.”

”After four long years in the making, we are finally ready to unveil our new album, Echoes of the Astrolith to the world!” Armory tell Decibel. “This one was a special album to make, as we had the first lineup change in the history of the band during the process when we got our new singer Chris Rostoff on board. The result is an album with catchier vocals, set against a backdrop of even darker riffs than usual. We hope that these new tunes of ours will bring much listening pleasure to Earth and mankind!”

Listen to an early stream below via Decibel. Echoes of the Astrolith is out on October 23 via Dying Victims Productions.

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