The day Egypt’s World Cup dream ended with defeat to Argentina, Jake Schroeder did what hundreds of thousands of his followers now expect: he sat down at his piano and turned collective heartbreak into a ballad.
Within hours, the New York creator – better known online as FrostedJake – was singing about Egyptian football fans with the same blend of earnestness, absurd humour and internet-savvy charm that has made him one of social media’s most unlikely cult figures.
For many Egyptians, it felt as if someone on the other side of the world had joined their grief.
It’s a formula that has won Jake a fiercely loyal following across the Middle East and South Asia.
Whether he’s writing songs for Pakistan, Oman, Ramadan or the UAE, the 24-year-old comedian and singer-songwriter has built a reputation for turning world events, cultural moments and political headlines into catchy piano ballads that somehow manage to be both ridiculous and sincere.
His humour has also become increasingly political. As wars rage abroad and immigration crackdowns intensify in the United States, Jake’s songs have evolved from light-hearted country ballads into satirical commentaries on authoritarianism, inequality and American foreign policy — all delivered with the same theatrical flair that first made him go viral.
Many of the ballads he pre-writes, Jake shares with The New Arab, but some are improvised.
“Rama, Rama, Ramadan was mostly on the spot,” he begins.
“I was with my friends Esra and Alaa, and we were just hanging out, having dinner, and I was like, ‘Guys, we have to do a song for Ramadan,’ because Alaa’s decorations were just up and her daughter was running around super excited. I told them it needs to be really catchy.”
The ballads began in early 2025 as a way for Jake to curb his anxiety and connect with the world, as he found himself out of a job and in search of a new one.
He first went viral after making a ballad about how hot Luigi Mangione is, the man accused of murdering the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, Brian Thompson, spiralling Schroeder into internet stardom.
Brands and companies caught on – Jake has over 550,000 followers on TikTok and 315,000 on Instagram – and what started off as a pastime is now his actual job: writing ballads for brands.
“There’s something about a white gay boy in America that is extremely landing in the Middle East right now,” he says.
“Every morning I would wake up, find a Wikipedia page of a different country, take some facts and make it into a song. The songs that really took off were for Pakistan, Oman, the UAE and Qatar. I am so entrenched in this culture now; it’s insane.”
The moment Jake realised just how popular he is with his South Asian fanbase was in October 2025, when he received an email from the United Nations asking him to perform his ballad for Pakistan at a UN conference.
“I told them, I would love to,” he recalls. “And then I met Malala [Yousafzai] and Riz Ahmed and all these Muslim cultural figures.”
He clearly made an impression on Riz Ahmed, because six months later, he approached Jake to collaborate on promoting the release of his debut TV series, Bait.
“Riz Ahmed was amazing. So handsome. And also, lovely and very funny,” he says.
“He was like, ‘Can I contribute to the music?’ And I said, ‘Sure, but I don’t have another instrument. Do you play piano?’ And Riz grabbed a water bottle and pen and was like, ‘I’ll just use this.’ And I said, ‘Okay, that’s great.'”
Jake shares that he studied English and computer science at university, but his lifelong passion is musical theatre.
Unintentionally, comedy and music have become the medium through which he comments on politics and raises awareness of causes such as LGBTQI+ rights, women’s rights, climate justice, wealth disparity, and the fight against AI.
“Maybe it is my own way to understand and process the world,” he says.
“The Dictators Used to Be Hot series was a more cerebral idea. That came about because it was around the time ICE was rounding up people on the streets in Minnesota. I was watching the country fall apart, and that made me want to sort of enact revenge on the President in a way that would strike and upset him, maybe by coming for his looks or his image. I mean, have you seen that photo of Joseph Stalin when he was young?”
However, not everyone seems to be on board with Jake’s sense of humour.
A ballad positioning Netanyahu as a dictator resulted in heated comments from pro-Israeli followers.
And back in March, he made a ballad for new Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei.
The Free Press, a subscription-based media outlet founded by American journalist Bari Weiss, who has come under fire for ‘pro-Trump meddling’ at American news channel CBS, called Jake a ‘Soviet, Marxist, Islamic radical.’
“I took a photo of the new Ayatollah at the time, Mujtaba, and was like, your turban is so chic, let’s be friends. Maybe we could just go to Ibiza and hang out and say, have a gay romance and you don’t have to do the war. It was very much a joke,” he tells The New Arab.
“Yes, the lyrics were insane. It was very clearly satire. And then this publication took the song and said that I was a Marxist Islamic radical, like a voice for terrorism. It’s crazy that these journalistic forces see the work I’m doing and the impact it has and try to pick it apart to come for me,” Jake adds.
Jake Schroeder, in many ways, reflects the multicultural and inclusive spirit of New York, but he says this wasn’t a conscious effort to be inclusive on his platforms; it is his lived reality.
“New York is the most international city in America,” he says.
“As a queer person, a lot of my friends are gay and trans and by virtue of that, people of colour with interesting stories of where they come from and where they’re going.
“I don’t think it’s something I try to do. That’s been my truth. I’ve always been in diverse spaces because of theatre, art, creating, singing and piano. Those spaces bring more people of minority experiences together than the majority.”
Can we expect a ballad every Ramadan and Eid?
“Hey, I’ll keep going,” he responds, smiling.
“As fun as it is to sing and make community with other people, it’s more fun to be the person who wrote that song.”
Yousra Samir Imran is a British-Egyptian writer based in Yorkshire. She is the author of Hijab and Red Lipstick, published by Hashtag Press.
Follow her on X: @UNDERYOURABAYA
