Song of the Day 6/6: Red Army Choir, “Korobeiniki” (Tetris theme)

Ever notice how all the things Trump considers entertaining are the same things that appeal to 13-year-old boys? UFC bouts on the lawn, car races through the streets, stuff going boom – it figures somebody thought it would be cool to create a clutch of retro video games aimed at promoting Trump’s agenda. So far, so dumb.

A writer for the Guardian played them all and offered a scathing review.

Like most things that come from the Trump White House communications team, they are mean-spirited, unimaginative and lazy. I have a strong suspicion that they are vibe-coded using AI, and I almost hope that they are, because the idea of humans spending their precious time on Earth making these horrid, half-arsed games makes me even sadder than playing them did.

One of the games has players build a wall – a border wall, of course – that works much like the classic game Tetris. In fact it works so much like Tetris, the best-selling video game of all time, that the company that owns the rights is considering a lawsuit over copyright infringement. This is very on-brand for Trump.

For whatever reason, the programmers didn’t add the Tetris theme music, maybe because they didn’t have to steal it – it’s based on a Russian tune from the late 19th century, so it’s in the public domain. Because Tetris was invented by a Russian software engineer in the mid-1980s, when Nintendo adapted it for the U.S. version of its hand-held Game Boy, they used the folk song “Korobeiniki” as the basis of its main musical theme, which is copyrighted.

“Korobeiniki,” usually translated as “The Peddlers,” tells the story of a peddler and a maiden haggling over his wares, nudge nudge wink wink. It first appeared as a poem in 1865 and was set to music by the end of the century. Here’s how it sounds when performed by the Red Army Choir.

Covers of the tune proliferated once the music became associated with the video game. A Eurodance version even made the British singles chart in 1992, but it’s so obnoxious I won’t link to it. The ska version recorded by the Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra for their debut album in 1989, under the title “Peddlers,” is easier on the ears.

And of course there’s a rock version, courtesy of Ozma, a California band that put it on their “Doubble Donkey Disc” in 2001, where it’s listed as “Tetris Theme (Korobeiniki).”