By David Young-
A TikTok footage of a prom king and queen’s winning dance has gone viral , but for all the wrong reasons.
The clip — taken at a 2017 Texas senior prom and uploaded by user Celeste Orozco on Thursday has gathered 16 million views . Exactly why Oronzco decided to upload the clip five years after the event is unknown.
The clip captured the moment the DJ played Ed Sheeran’s “Thinking Out Loud” for the selected royalty.
Sheeran can be heard singing in the opening line: “When your legs don’t work like they used to before.”
Viewers have expressed their objection at the 2014 smash hit’s lyric as prom queen Sarah Mendenhall sat in the middle of the dance floor — in a wheelchair.
“This would haunt me the rest of my life if I were the DJ,” Orozco wrote on top of the scene, which has over 2.8 million likes and 44,900 comments.
It has been criticised and heckled for his choice of song for a prom queen who is in a wheelchair.
In the opening lines, Sheeran sings: “when your legs don’t work like they used to before.” When those first few bars played out as the couple started to dance, you can clearly hear groans and some voices of discontent aimed at the dance from the onlooking crowd.
During the prom queen and king’s first dance, the DJ played ‘Thinking Out Loud’ by Ed Sheeran. And judging by everyone’s reaction to the opening line, “when your legs don’t work like they used to before”, it may not have been the most appropriate song to play in that situation.
Users soon flooded the comments section with support on the video, which was captioned: “This would haunt me the rest of my life if I were the DJ”.
“I FORGOT THE SONG BEGAN LIKE THIS,” one person commented.
Someone else wrote: “The way I immediately thought of ‘YOU NEED TO LEAVE!’”
“He called her OUT,” penned another.
“Ed Sheeran got straight to the point,” a fourth person wrote“I would have been so embarrassed and just cried and left. I’m hoping this didn’t ruin her night,” a different social media user wrote, sympathising with the prom queen.
Meanwhile, the prom queen, Sarah Mendenhall, wrote beneath the video to clear the air.
“Hey everyone so this is me lol… I found it really funny and ironic. I didn’t know what was playing until way after cause I was tryna dance @Celeste.”
Many believe the prom queen’s public response was to play down any potential offence, though the possibility she saw the funny side is posssible.
TikTok users flooded the comments section with criticism of the video, which was captioned: “This would haunt me the rest of my life if I were the DJ”. Credit: @celesteiliana__/TikTok
The video creator, Celeste Orozco, then replied, adding: “Had a great prom night and a good laugh about it the next day @sarahmendenhall4.”
Prom queen Sarah Mendenhal can be seen sat in the middle of the dance floor ( Image: celesteiliana__/Tiktok)
The choice of music was bad taste for the occasion, and lacked empathy.
However, the decision of Celeste Orozco to publish the clip appears to have been a very bad one. A song that can be misconstrued to be ridiculing a disabled woman should never have been chosen for such an occasion, and user Orozaco was wallowing in controversy in his thought process when he posted the article.
oronzco was contacted for comment