With the Willympics Lip Sync competition coming up, students are in the midst of listening to hundreds of songs in preparation. Now that students are back on campus and TikTok trends are moving at the speed of sound, students have an infinite digital jukebox of music to choose from.
TikTok now has around 800 million users, according to their official statistics. What makes the platform unique from other social media is how heavily it relies on music. It is built to create music trends, and it has succeeded. One of the junior class start-of-school orientation activities was to go on a treasure hunt, and one of the items on the list was to film a TikTok with a teacher. Almost every group filmed a TikTok dance.
Today, there are also many references to popular TikTok sounds daily, with dances, memes, and trends created around songs.
One current music trend include videos referencing the line “Wake up it’s the first of the month” from Playboi Carti’s “Sky.” With the rise and mainstream acceptance of queer culture, the song “We Fell in Love in October” by Norwegian singer-songwriter girl in red is also popular. “Sweater Weather” by The Neighborhood (often called “the bisexual anthem”) resurfaces every year about now; so does “White Woman’s Instagram” by comedian-musician Bo Burnham.
Even “All I Want For Christmas is You” defrosts every year around now, just enough time for us to play Mariah Carey’s 1994 anthem until we can’t dance to it — or stand it — anymore.
What’s popular on TikTok today, however, doesn’t suit everyone’s taste.
Charles Raffetto, Theatre Production and Facilities Manager, agrees that the rise of technology is now able to boost the listener base for songs, but thinks there are aspects of TikTok music culture that take away from the creativity found in starting a band with your friends.
“You no longer need to have a band to create music, you just need a computer; I like that from a creative aspect, but it does make me a little sad that you don’t need a band anymore,” he said. “There is something about the collaborative nature of music that makes it good.”
Raffetto tends to gravitate towards new music today that references the music he listened to as a teenager, mainly rock and punk. There are many artists that mimic that style, including Vundabar, Late Night Drive Home, and Odd Sweetheart.
Those artists are not in the mainstream, however; artists trending in 2022 and 2023 include Harry Styles, Doja Cat, Mitski, Lizzo, Olivia Rodrigo, Taylor Swift, Lil Nas X, and Kanye West. Popular TikTok songs have always predominantly been in the pop, rap, or indie genres.
Bad Bunny, Taylor Swift, Drake, BTS, and The Weeknd were part of the Top 5 listened-to artists from 2020 to 2022, according to Spotify’s “Global Wrapped” end-of-the-year feature.
Beatrice Cody, a Latin teacher at Williston, thinks music is becoming more homogenous.
“My impression is the music today sounds very machined and produced; it doesn’t sound as organic as it used to, and it’s not as complex,” she said. “It’s like they are massaged into a certain type of sound, it doesn’t have the type of earthiness of the music I am drawn to.”
Cannon Carr, a Williston junior, agrees.
“With TikTok and being able to advertise your own music without a record label, I feel like a lot of people produce music just to go viral instead of using music as a medium for artistic expression,” he said. “A lot of songs sound like the artist only put thought into the first two seconds.”
Music is, according to some, also becoming simpler. According to 2022 musical analysis statistics from Soundfly of trending songs, popular songs that have unique chord progressions make up only half of the popular songs that use a diatonic chord progression, and most songs now also only use four chords.
In a graph in “Instrumentational Complexity of Music Genres and Why Simplicity Sells” by Garmaliel Percino, Peter Klimek and Stefan Thurner published in 2014, out of 13 genres studied, electronic and hip hop have the highest uniformity and the lowest variety. It is also mentioned, according to the authors, that modern vocals in songs now either sound too “whispy” or too autotuned. And, with the rise of streaming services, more artists are trying to fit into trends for financial incentives, creating an overall sameness to what we hear on a daily basis.
But no matter what, people are still producing music, and students all around the world are, and always will be, bonding over it.
“Music is like a best friend growing up; it helps you express yourself and understand the world and other ways of thinking,” Cody said.
She recalled an Ed Sheeran concert she attended this summer.
“I saw this group of people scream and dance along to the lyrics,” she said. “It is such an important part of culture and growth. It was present during the Vietnam war, it was present in the hippie culture of the 60s, it was present through so many historical events, and it’s still present today. Music brings people together.”