Brian Jordan Alvarez Wants to Keep “Sitting”—And Partying—On the Internet

Sitting? If you’ve spent any time on the internet in the last few weeks, you know that sitting is the opposite of standing. That’s thanks to comedian and actor Brian Jordan Alvarez’s incredibly viral and incredibly catchy song “Sitting,” performed by TJ Mack, one of his many comedy personae. “Sitting” (which, because this is the internet, is actually pronounced “sittim”) has spawned multiple mega-viral TikToks, with users covering the song in genres including but not limited to electro pop, musical theater, country, acoustic, and death metal. It’s so popular that “Sitting” has landed on the radio in the US and Australia. In a year without a clear song of the summer—unless you count “Planet of the Bass,” another TikTok parody—“Sitting” by TJ Mack may very well be that girl.

“Why do I think ‘Sitting,’ specifically, is blowing up? I have a simple answer to that question, which is, I think it’s because sitting really is the opposite of standing,” Alvarez tells VF. “People are connecting to the truth of the song.”

Phoning in from Los Angeles, Alvarez, an actor and comedian who’s appeared in Jane the Virgin, the Will & Grace reboot, and, most recently, M3GAN, actually seems as surprised as anyone that “Sitting” has taken over the internet, with no signs of slowing down.

“You don’t know what’s gonna go viral,” he says. “It inspires a lot of courage and ease in me because it’s like, Well, just post it and you’ll kind of find out how good it is.” That said, Alvarez had an inkling that “Sitting” might be TJ Mack’s big break after he posted the OG video on September 10. “The original video is just a cappella. It’s TJ Mack in his apartment, which is randomly also my apartment,” says Alvarez. “People started reposting it a lot, and one of the things I kept hearing was, ‘Whoa, this is actually a good song. Oh, my God, this is a bop.’”

Unlike many of the chart-topping tracks you hear on the radio, “Sitting” did not have a team of Swedish songwriters behind its hook. “It’s all improvised,” Alvarez says, as is the case with the other comedy videos he records and posts online. But as luck would have it, Alvarez’s first take of “Sitting” was the victim of technical difficulties, so he had to do it a second time. “I think it is a big part of why it’s so much higher quality,” he says. “I had just had a rehearsal where I’d made it up. Then when I did it the second time, it was so much cleaner and tighter.”

“Everything you see of mine is the first take, and then suddenly I’m willing to do one more take, and it goes so much more viral. And it’s like, Well, maybe you should do a second take,” he says with a laugh. “I’m always so obsessed with doing everything off the cuff. Sometimes it’s like, You know, if you practice a little bit, it’ll just get better.”

“Sitting” didn’t blow up on the strength of Alvarez’s second take alone. Musicians across the internet took to his initial video, releasing their own covers of the song. One such cover, put out by Josh Mac, a US-based music producer from New Zealand, added high-quality production, giving the track catchy, electro-synth accompaniment, layered vocals, and, of course, a sick beat. It has, perhaps, become the definitive version of “Sitting.”

Mac’s version, which is available on Spotify and Apple Music, is the one that has graced radio stations in the US and Australia. “[Josh Mac made] a fully fleshed-out pop track that sounds literally good and normal when you play it on the radio,” says Alvarez. “That is hugely to his credit. He mixed the vocals. He makes it all sound clean. When they play it on the radio, it’s like, Oh yeah, this is a song on the radio. It’s a funny song, but it’s still a song on the radio.”

While Alvarez credits Mac with taking “Sitting” to the top of the internet’s chart, he is quick to shower love on a bevy of covers, reposting various versions he comes across on the internet. “There’s all of this incredible celebration of the internet that happens with these things,” says Alvarez. “For me, it’s so inspiring about the human race. Look at this: We can still make art, and we can make art using this new technology that we’re sometimes afraid of.”