Who did it first
Cups (When I'm Gone)
Not an Anna Kendrick original — a 1931 folk song with a 2009 cup arrangement
This is a double misattribution. Almost everyone takes the cup song for an Anna Kendrick original, from Pitch Perfect (2012), but her version is neither the song’s origin nor the arrangement’s. The underlying song, ‘When I’m Gone’, is A.P. Carter’s, recorded by the Carter Family in 1931. The famous cup-tapping percussion arrangement everyone imitates was created by the British duo Lulu and the Lampshades and put on YouTube in 2009. Kendrick’s film performance came last, and it is what the public remembers as the source.
The record
Who did it first
How we traced it
The song itself, ‘When I’m Gone’, was written by A.P. Carter and recorded by the Carter Family in 1931 — Carter was famous for collecting and reshaping Appalachian folk material, and the melody predates every version most people know Wikipedia ↗.
In 2009 the British duo Lulu and the Lampshades — Heloise Tunstall-Behrens and Luisa Gerstein — reworked Carter’s song and added the now-iconic cup-tapping percussion, uploading it to YouTube. That arrangement, not the 1931 recording, is what turned the song into a phenomenon Wikipedia ↗.
A viral cover by Anna Burden spread the cup game further, and Anna Kendrick discovered it that way before performing it in Pitch Perfect (2012). Her 2013 single reached the Billboard top 10 and so dominated public memory that most listeners assume she originated it — unaware of both the 1931 song and the 2009 arrangement Wikipedia ↗.
Wikipedia — the full lineage of the cup songKnow more about the original — or think we’ve got it wrong? Add a source →
Fact-check
The attribution problem
This is a two-layer misattribution. Nothing about Anna Kendrick’s record is fake, but the public credits her with two things she did not do — writing the song and inventing the cup arrangement — when both belong to other people.
‘It’s Anna Kendrick’s song’
Kendrick’s Pitch Perfect version (2012) is a cover of a cover. She wrote none of it and arranged none of it — she found it through viral YouTube videos the history ↗.
Lulu and the Lampshades, 2009
The cup-tapping percussion that defines the song was created by this British duo and posted to YouTube in 2009. That arrangement, not Kendrick’s, is the thing every later version imitates who they are ↗.
A.P. Carter, 1931
‘When I’m Gone’ is a Carter Family folk song from 1931, and the melody is older than that. The composition long predates both the arrangement and the film the writer ↗.
Written by A.P. Carter in 1931, arranged for cups by Lulu and the Lampshades in 2009, and made famous — but not originated — by Anna Kendrick in 2012 the record ↗.
Context
Why the newest version ate the older two
Most cover-eclipses have one buried layer; this one has two. A 1931 folk song sat quietly in the Carter Family catalogue for decades, then in 2009 two British musicians reinvented it with a cup-percussion trick that made it irresistibly copyable. When Anna Kendrick performed that arrangement in a hit 2012 film, the movie’s reach simply overwrote everything beneath it.
The irony is that the cup game spread because it was easy to imitate — and every imitation carried the song further from its authors. By the time it reached the Billboard top 10, the folk writer and the arrangers had both vanished from the story, leaving only the most famous face attached to it.
The three layers, in order
- A.P. Carter writes ‘When I’m Gone’; the Carter Family records it in 1931.
- Lulu and the Lampshades add the cup-tapping arrangement and post it to YouTube, 2009.
- Anna Burden’s cover goes viral after being shared on Reddit, 2011.
- Anna Kendrick performs it in Pitch Perfect (2012), then releases it as a single (2013 → US No. 6).
- The public takes Kendrick’s version as the origin, unaware of the 1931 song or the 2009 arrangement.
A 1931 folk song, a 2009 arrangement, a 2012 film — and the public remembers only the last one.