# The Boys Are Back In Town "The Boys Are Back In Town" is Thin Lizzy's 1976 arena rock anthem that got a second life online, first stapled onto Advice Animals in the early 2010s and then flipped into a Weird Twitter in-joke after a 2015 Vice stunt and a Dril tweet made the title phrase funny on its own. ## Origin Thin Lizzy released "The Boys Are Back In Town" as a single on April 17, 1976 from the album Jailbreak, where it hit number one in Ireland, number eight in the UK and number 12 on the US Billboard Hot 100[1]. Management reportedly pushed the band to include it on the album after initially leaving it off[8]. The earliest sustained online fixation is the single-serving Twitter account @intownagain, which started posting lyrics from the song in September 2009[4]. The caption usage on Advice Animals built up over the next few years before the Weird Twitter wave took over. - **Platform:** Image macros (early use) / Twitter and Tumblr (Weird Twitter revival) - **Creator:** Unknown - **Date:** 2009 ## Overview The meme has two distinct lives. In its first, the title phrase was slapped onto classic Advice Animals like Brace Yourself, Matrix Morpheus and Success Kid, played straight as a declaration that some group was, in fact, back[4]. The gag only required one line, which is why it worked across so many templates with no setup. Its second life is weirder. On Weird Twitter the lyric got drained of sincerity and used as absurdist filler, often triggered by nothing in particular[2]. The joke rides on how overexposed the song is at bars, sports events and political rallies, so repeating the line reads as a parody of hype itself. By late 2015 and 2016, Dril-adjacent accounts were treating "the boys are back in town" as a self-contained punchline that didn't need an image, a video or a context[3][5]. ## How It Spread The pivot from sincere Advice Animal caption to ironic Weird Twitter catchphrase happened in 2015. On March 23, Vice ran a first-person piece titled "I Played 'The Boys Are Back in Town' on a Bar Jukebox Until I Got Kicked Out," a stunt that treated the song as an endurance test for other patrons[2]. KYM credits the article with setting the tone for the ironic revival that followed[4]. On November 29, 2015, Dril posted a tweet riffing on the title, which pushed the phrase into his orbit of followers[3]. About a week later, Tumblr user Bromurra published a "good end / bad end" text post built around the song, which Meme Archives reblogged on February 9, 2016 and which pulled in over 5,900 notes by that October[5]. By late September 2016, @SocMalpractice summed up the whole bit by tweeting a scenario where he described Twitter to his mother as a website where everyone disagrees about everything "except that referencing 'the boys are back in town' is funny"[6]. Away from the meme circuit, the song kept recycling through film, TV and politics. Everclear covered it for the 2001 film A Knight's Tale, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia used it in the 2010 episode "Dennis Gets Divorced," and Paul Ryan walked out to it at the 2012 Republican National Convention, which the family of late Thin Lizzy frontman Phil Lynott publicly objected to[1]. ## How to Use Typical use is to drop the exact phrase "the boys are back in town" into a post with no setup, often in reply to a photo of friends, a sports moment, or absolutely nothing. The common convention is to let the line stand on its own, since the song is familiar enough that no quotation marks or context are needed. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is The Boys Are Back In Town? It's a 1976 Thin Lizzy rock single whose title line became an internet catchphrase, first as an Advice Animals caption and later as a Weird Twitter in-joke[1][4]. ### Where did The Boys Are Back In Town come from? The song came out April 17, 1976 on Thin Lizzy's Jailbreak album[1]. Its memeification started with the @intownagain Twitter account in September 2009 and ramped up in 2015 to 2016[4]. ### What does The Boys Are Back In Town mean? Online, the phrase is used ironically with no particular meaning, riffing on how overplayed the song is at bars, sports events and political rallies[2][6]. ### How do you use The Boys Are Back In Town? People typically drop the exact line into a tweet or post with no setup, often as a reaction to a group photo or nothing at all, and let the familiarity of the song do the work[3][5]. ### Is The Boys Are Back In Town still popular? The song is a classic rock staple that made Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs list[1], and the ironic Weird Twitter usage became a durable catchphrase after the 2015 to 2016 wave[4][6]. ## References 1. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boys_Are_Back_in_Town#Appearances_in_other_media]() 2. [http://www.vice.com/read/i-played-the-boys-are-back-in-town-on-a-bar-jukebox-until-i-got-kicked-out-832]() 3. [https://twitter.com/dril/status/670963270317154304?lang=en]() 4. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-boys-are-back-in-town]() 5. [http://bromuraa.tumblr.com/post/134884995961/good-end-the-boys-are-back-in-town-bad-end-the]() 6. [https://twitter.com/SocMalpractice/status/781501302295658496]() 7. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quyB8PMTD3o]() 8. [http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=744]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/the-boys-are-back-in-town Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library