If your feed is full of couples, best friends and cats on a wooden pier at sunset, one waiting and one singing, that is the Raindance meme. It borrows 28 seconds of the music video for "Raindance" by Dave and Tems and swaps the two people for someone else. This guide covers the song, the video, how the AI version caught on, where to read the lyrics, and how to make yours with Raindance AI.
The song: Dave and Tems, "Raindance"
"Raindance" is a song by the British rapper Dave with the Nigerian singer Tems. It came out on 23 October 2025 on Dave's third album, The Boy Who Played the Harp, and the two of them wrote it together. Critics heard it as a soft, stripped-back Afroswing love song, with Tems' voice set against Dave's.
It was a slow burn. It entered the UK chart at number five, dropped into the twenties around Christmas, then climbed to number one in late January 2026. That made it Dave's fourth UK number one and Tems' first.
The music video
The official video arrived on 9 January 2026, directed by Nathan James Tettey and shot in Lagos. Most of it plays like a wedding reception, but around the middle it cuts to a quiet golden-hour sequence: a man sitting at the end of a pier, looking at the water, while Tems sings to him by the sea. Close-ups, a hand reaching toward the lens, arms crossed in the wind, a twirl at the end of the pier, and the two of them on the sand at dusk.
That sequence runs from 0:52 to 1:20 of the video. Eleven shots, 28 seconds. When people search for the "Raindance music video" this autumn, it is usually this part they mean.
How it became a meme
On 25 September 2026 someone posted an AI version with two cats in the two roles: a grey cat waiting on the pier, a ragdoll singing. A day later a version with real people, posted on TikTok by @beshhq, took off and pulled in millions of views. Within a week the format was everywhere: couples tagging each other, best friends taking turns as the singer, parents putting their kids or their dog on the pier.
The joke works because the scene is so earnest. Put your own partner, your flatmate or your cat into a slow, sunlit love song and it lands somewhere between sweet and ridiculous, which is exactly the point.
The version that took off: real people, posted by @beshhq on 26 September 2026.
Where to read the Raindance lyrics
We don't print the lyrics here, as they belong to the songwriters. You can read them, synced to the song, in the lyrics view of most streaming apps, and on lyrics sites such as Genius. A lot of people find the song the other way round: a sung line from Tems' part is stuck in their head after the meme, and they type it into Google to find out what it is. The part the trend uses is the stretch where Tems sings on the pier and the beach, so if a half-remembered line led you here, it is almost certainly from her verse.
Make your own Raindance AI video
You need two photos: one of the person who waits, one of the person who sings. One photo with both of you in it works too.
- Open Raindance AI on your phone or laptop. The Raindance effect is already selected.
- Add photo 1, the one who waits. They sit at the end of the pier and take the wide shots.
- Add photo 2, the singer. They get the close-ups and the lip-sync, so give this slot your sharpest, most front-facing photo.
- Tap Make the effect. In a few minutes you get the 28-second scene with both faces and the matching part of the real song on top.
The finished video is vertical 9:16, made for TikTok and Reels. It costs 12 credits at 720p, which is exactly one $9.99 Single pack, or 8 credits at 480p. Failed renders are never charged.
One of ours, made from two photos. The people are AI-generated.
Photos that work
- Waist-up beats full-length. The scene is mostly close-ups, and a waist-up photo gives the AI more face to work with.
- Clear light on the singer. The pier is lit by a low sun, so a dark or blurry photo shows up fast in the close-ups.
- Your outfit carries over. Each person keeps the clothes from their photo, so a linen shirt or a summer dress fits the mood better than a hoodie.
- Pets are welcome. A cat or a dog stays a real animal with its own fur: it sits up, mouths the song and reaches out a paw. The meme did start with two cats.
- Only people who agreed. Use your own photos and those of people who are happy to be in it. Anyone under 18 needs a parent's consent, and leave celebrities out.
Other ways people make it
- A CapCut template. You drop in photos and the template handles the cuts and the timing to the song. How much the faces actually move and sing depends on the template.
- A video model with the clip as reference. You download the 28 seconds, upload it with a photo to a face-swap or reference-video tool, and retry until the face holds. Then you add the song yourself and line it up.
- A long prompt. You describe the pier, the light and each shot in an image-to-video tool. The result is a new scene in the same spirit, not the same eleven shots, and it has no song.
Whichever route you take, if you want your post on the TikTok sound page, choose "Raindance" as the sound when posting and turn the original audio down.
After Raindance
The same studio makes the other duet trends of the season: Hotel Lobby AI for two friends trading bars in the orange booth, and Bulin 47 AI for the street freestyle with the speaker.
RapVideo AI is an independent fan-made tool, not affiliated with Dave, Tems or their labels.