BY KELSEY PURCELL, FEATURES ASSIGNMENT EDITOR
Tik Tok has a surprising influence on the music charts. When a throwback song from years ago almost magically reappears at the top of the charts, sometimes Tik Tok is responsible for this occurrence.
On Tik Tok, trends go around where people are dancing to a song or using text to tell a funny story while lip-synching to a song. These trends catch on very quickly and go viral on the app. When the trends go viral, the sounds used in the trends also go viral. The songs are usually pretty catchy and many Tik Tok users find themselves singing verses of the song throughout the day.
People also like to play the songs and listen to the whole versions after they regain popularity from Tik Tok trends. When enough people are listening to a song from a Tik Tok audio on their own music streaming apps, the song can make its way back onto the charts.
For example, back in October 2020, a Tik Tok video went viral of Nathan Apodaca, a potato warehouse worker from Idaho, drinking Ocean Spray cran-raspberry juice, riding a skateboard and lip-synching to Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams.” The song made its way back onto the music charts and hit spot 21 of Billboard’s Hot 100 chart during the week of Oct. 17.
Artists like to promote their new music on the app as well. Tate McRae, an 18-year-old Canadian singer-songwriter, teased her new song, “She’s All I Want to Be” on Tik Tok. Tik Tokers used the teaser of her song in their own Tik Tok videos. They would lip-sync and scream along to the lyrics of the song. McRae generated a lot of interest in “She’s All I Want to Be” by releasing part of it on Tik Tok. She used all of the hype surrounding the song to get people to use the Tik Tok audio. She finally released the song and music video, and a lot of Tik Tok users were anxiously waiting for the full version.
A portion of “We Don’t Talk about Bruno,” a song from Disney’s newest animated film “Encanto,” is all over Tik Tok. People are doing Mariano’s walk from the movie and adding text of their own relatable and funny scenarios to it. The song hit the number one spot on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart during the first week of February.
Musicians seem to be using Tik Tok as a platform to tease their songs and generate a bigger audience and anticipation for their music release. It is a clever tactic that many more singers may start to take advantage of for their upcoming releases. Music and audio are key parts of a Tik Tok video. Many old songs or remixes of past songs are resurfacing on the app and becoming popular again because of Tik Tok.
