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The music industry hasn’t been the same these past few years. Whether you want to admit it or not, the internet has quickly changed the game for aspiring artists and artists who are looking to gain mainstream popularity.
Rapper, singer, and songwriter Doja Cat started her music career with the 2018 release of Amala, her debut studio album. But it wasn’t until “Mooo!” — a song where she repeatedly tells the audience that she’s a cow — became a viral meme that her career began to take off.
The 19-year-old got her next taste of internet fame with “Say So,” a catchy, sugary pop song that gave audiences a taste of her skills as a rapper. The pop song + rap is practically part of her brand at this point, making “Say So” the perfect song for her to go viral with.
And it’s all thanks to TikTok.
“Say So” started to gain traction after Haley Sharpe filmed a video of her and her mother dancing to the song. “Say So” would then go on to have a remix version featuring Nicki Minaj. It was this collab with Doja Cat, out of over a hundred songs previously released, that would get Nicki Minaj to the top of the Billboard 100 for the first time.
It’s clear that TikTok has done a lot for artists as a powerhouse of internet culture, much like Tumblr in its heyday but with a greater ability to exert mainstream influence. The platform has done more than make artists famous, though. TikTok has created new, up-and-coming artists thanks to the support of its tight-knit fan communities and, of course, virality.
Tiktok Is Making the Creative Process Interactive
GAYLE, who is on TikTok as @gaylecantspell, is a 17-year-old artist based in Nashville, Tennessee. On July 29, the artist uploaded a video to TikTok where she introduced herself as a pop artist who needs a little help because “your has no song ideas.” GAYLE asked TikTok users to, “Literally just go to the comments, put anything, literally anything you want and I will try and turn it into a song.”
Her invitation for users to join in on a collaborative songwriting process didn’t go unanswered as GAYLE received a flood of comments and likes. One of the top comments on that video was one from @nancy_berman who asked the artist to try and write a breakup song using the alphabet. GAYLE replied the next day with a video captioned “definitely not based off personal experience” that was, in fact, based on personal experience.
That song was “abcdefu,” an angry breakup song that GAYLE says is “empowering you to get pissed off.” It’s an intensely personal track that reads as if it came straight out of a teenager’s diary which it likely did. It’s up there with Olivia Rodrigo’s “Good 4 U” and carolesdaughter’s “Violent,” both of which became viral sensations on TikTok if you’re looking for angry breakup songs by teenage popstars to cry in the shower to.
GAYLE claims that she tried to stay on good terms with her ex-boyfriend and keep their personal business private. That is until she discovered that her ex had been more loose-lipped with their former relationship. GAYLE then let loose in “abcdefu” where she tells her ex that, “Everybody but your dog, you can all fuck off.”
“And so I think especially with the start of [‘abcdefu’] it’s like, I’m not afraid for somebody to think I’m a bitch. I’m just angry. I’m mad at somebody who really hurt me. And, you know, I’m way more than just a ‘fuck you’ girl, but I think it’s a good start to the story I’m trying to tell.” GAYLE shared with American Songwriter.
The song is, essentially, a young girl giving herself permission to be angry and bitter after someone hurt her. It’s a breath of fresh air that marks a change in the way new audiences see artists. Remember all the hate Taylor Swift received as a teenage girl for writing about her exes as if no other man ever did it?
“Instead of showing girls how to respect men and set an example of how to have a healthy relationship, Swift only sends the message that unstable, sporadic relationships are okay because you can make money off of the break-up.” Hattie Troutman wrote on Swift back in 2019.
Taylor Swift would nod to this double standard where female artists are vilified for singing about their hurts in her acceptance speech for Billboard‘s Woman of the Decade Award later that same year and The Man, a scathing commentary on the way detractors have tried to portray her as “undeserving” or if we’re going to be more specific, claims by a certain man saying he “made” Swift famous.
Given the hate she received throughout her career for singing about her exes, it’s great to see female teen artists being able to speak more freely about their experiences in recent years.
And speaking of giving young women a platform for their music.
The Tiktok Artist With Something to Say
Penelope Scott, known on TikTok as @worsethanithot, is a 21-year-old singer and songwriter who has gained popularity on the platform for her uniquely Doomer flavor of music. If you don’t know what that is, a Doomer is basically the Gen Z equivalent of a Boomer, except this time you’re depressed and having an existential crisis because you live in an increasingly meaningless world doomed to die at the hands of corporations and global warming. I kid you not. Gen Z views itself as the Lost Generation of the 21st century.
As bleak as it sounds, that Doomer worldview is what Scott brings to her music and the fact that she has thousands of fans is proof that she isn’t the only one who feels the same way.
Unlike GAYLE, who is signed with Atlantic Records, Scott self-produces all of her own music much like the bedroom pop artists of the mid to late 2010s.
Scott is best known for “rät” which first appeared on TikTok as “Elongated Muskrat.” Yes, you already know who the title is referring to but it’s really a criticism of the entire system and not one man alone. The song comes off as an angry ideological breakup song between a Doomer and late-stage capitalism.
“When I said take me to the moon, I never meant take me alone. I thought if mankind toured the sky it meant all of us could go.” Penelope sings over the muffled sounds of a synth.
As nebulous as the topic sounds, the song has resonated with a lot of Gen Z listeners with one commenter on her album version saying, “Everything about this is just relatable. The anti-capitalism, the daddy issues, the rich kid guilt, the science kid anger.” And 14,000 others agreed. With 14 million views to its name, the Doomer worldview is anything but niche.
But before we wrap up.
Oh, and an Unofficial Musical Made Entirely on Tiktok Has Been Nominated for a Grammy
When the Netflix period drama Bridgerton became popular last year, it spawned an interest in the Regency era, period romance books, and even Regency-inspired attire and interior design. Oh, and a duo on TikTok decided they would make a musical about Bridgerton.
Musicals are typically big productions that require several singers to pitch in and make the story come to life. But when Barlow and Bear, a singer-songwriter duo on Tiktok, created “The Unofficial Bridgerton the Musical,” they did it all on their own. As in, they wrote, played the instruments, and sang all of the parts on their own. The duo shared their creative process with thousands of fans of the show who stuck around to see what would happen.
What happened was an album that soared into popularity at No.1 on the iTunes pop album chart where it went toe to toe with albums by Kanye West and Drake according to the Rockford Register Star.
The artists shared what it was like with the newspaper, saying that, “It’s like we were workshopping instantly. We were writing in real-time with the people who would come to our show and buy the album. They were telling us exactly what they liked and didn’t like in real-time. It created a really incredible community.”
The unprecedented popularity of the album landed Barlow and Bear on Forbes‘s 30 Under 30 list for its social media category.
“The Unofficial Bridgerton the Musical” was nominated for a Grammy award in November 2021.
“We didn’t do it to make money, we didn’t do it to get famous. We just did it because we love to write and we love Bridgerton.” Barlow said in an interview with the Independent. Should “The Unofficial Bridgerton the Musical” win, it will be the second fan-created work that fans on the internet contributed to that will have received a major award, the first one being Archive Of Our Own, a website that hosts fan-written stories, and its, at the time, 4.7 million fanfiction works’ 2019 Hugo Award.
