Obama throws “Clairo Shade”? What the viral meme really means

Is “Clairo Shade” popping up all over your feed? Here's what the memes are actually about.

(Image: Nick__Nation on X)

If you're trying to figure out if this article is perhaps taking a jab at Clairo, don't worry – it's not. This space is free of Clairo jabs, but it will explain what the ongoing meme actually means. The term has become a Twitter sensation this year and has even drawn a response from Clairo himself. So what's going on? Let's analyze the Clairo jabs memes and tweets.

Who is Clairo? Claire Cottrill, known as Clairo, is an indie pop artist who first gained attention with her viral bedroom pop tracks before releasing her acclaimed debut album Immunity in 2019, featuring the standout track “Bags.” She's collaborated with artists like Mura Masa and Charli XCX, and her 2021 album Sling was a '70s-inspired project with Jack Antonoff that wasn't about commercial success. That's no Clairo shade—just a sign that she wasn't looking for hits.

Clairo's last album, Charm, released this year, was her most commercially successful to date. During this album cycle, memes exploded, likely increasing her popularity even further.

So what is Clairo-Shade? It's a meme trend in the Twitter music community where almost everything is humorously interpreted as an indirect dig at Clairo. The idea is to claim that random, unrelated things are somehow a subtle dig at them. Here are some examples:

• Barack Obama's omission of Clairo from his summer playlist was jokingly referred to as “international proportions of Clairo-shade.”

• A political meme that suggests that an event like Trump's assassination was a “lowkey Clairo Shade.”

• Even a simple birthday wish from PopCrave to Clairo was investigated for possible insult because it contained a period instead of an exclamation point.