Echos Of The Pop: Tik Tok and the changing Pop stars

By: Juan Nunez (Twitter)

Lenny Kravitz's single Fly Away was released on December 29, 1998. It's an OK song, not bad but not great. It doesn't make a statement. Fly Away is one of the countless catchy pop-rock songs that you don't mind when it comes on the radio. Its a poster child for satisfactory popular music with mass appeal. There's nothing wrong with that. 

Fly Away peaked at number 12 in on the Hot 100 charts, number 29 overall for the year. It found success overseas as well. It topped the charts in the UK and Iceland and reached number 3 in Canada. It's not the biggest song of the year, but it's a good solid hit for Lenny Kravitz. Like many other good solid pop hits before and after it, Fly Away had a longer shelf life than just the pop and rock charts. It was a part of the first "Now that's what I call music!" compilation album released in the USA. That compilation album was a platinum record. As of August 2020, there have been 75 "Now That's What I call Music" albums released in the USA. And that's just one of the many markets with such albums. Fly Away was featured as the official song of the 1999 NBA finals. It was featured in the movie Coyote Ugly, an inoffensive moderate hit movie of the era that you may remember the name of even if you can't recall a single frame of the movie. Fly Away was a part of Guitar Hero 5 in 2009. That video game sold about 1 million copies worldwide and was the last really popular Guitar Hero game. Currently, the video for Fly Away has 83.5 million views on Youtube, and the song has remained on solid rotation on radio stations and playlists across the world. 

As of the writing of this article, I'm about to turn 35 years old. Fly Away by Lenny Kravitz has been around me from my teenage years to today. I don't really have a choice about that. I never bought a Lenny Kravitz album or mp3. I think that his music is OK but just OK. But I have nostalgia for that song, and many other pop media pieces like it because of their staying power. They're an inescapable part of the soundtrack of an entire generation. Sometimes multiple generations. I specifically picked Fly Away because it's a not-obvious example that might be around you without noticing. I'm sure if you're reading this, you can pull examples from their own experience that are even more pervasive. Yesterday by The Beatles, Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen, Start Me Up by The Rolling Stones, etc. 

Granted, most of this is a manufactured staying power controlled by advertising firms and record companies. Commercials, movie soundtracks, the radio, and other mediums in which we experience these songs repeatedly select for certain kinds of music. There are former number one hits that are totally forgotten by most people. Yet, you've heard One Way Or Another by Blondie a million times, even though it was only a minor hit when it was released. But even if its highly controlled by faceless corporations, the media that sticks around for decades is still important to us. It makes up most of the popular culture we all share. We bond over these shared cultural touchstones. We've all said, "Hey, remember this?" to someone at some point. The entire point of a site like When It Was Cool is to share fond memories via these shared touchstones.

Floppy disks, phone booths, telling your friend who didn't have a chance to see a primetime TV episode all the details without fear of "spoilers." Time passes, and the world changes. The world in which these long-lasting pop hits live is no exception. Since 1999, we've invented Mp3 piracy, streaming services of all kinds, modern social media, and more. We've created Spotify while rendering MTV obsolete. 

Enter Death Bed (Coffee for Your Head) by Powfu featuring Beabadoobee. These names will undoubtedly sound like gibberish to some of you, but I guarantee that this is a pop hit single from the year 2020. It's a depressing, low-fi, hip-hop song from the point of view of a terminally ill patient. Think In My Time of Dying for Gen-z. 

Powfu has been releasing music on Soundcloud and YouTube since 2017. The original version of Death Bed was released on February 9, 2019 on the YouTube channel Promoting Sounds, which specializes in promoting unknown independent Hip Hop artists. The song picked momentum slowly until it eventually went viral on Tik Tok in January 2020. The single was released as an official single on Columbia records February 8, 2020. It became a certified platinum single and peaked at 23 in the Hot 100 charts while staying in the charts throughout the spring and summer months. 

Like some of the biggest breakout pop stars of the current era, Powfu became big on the social media platform Tik Tok. Tik Tok specializes in short-form meme videos, under 15 seconds, many of which use song intros or chorus as the soundtrack. There are other ways to find new music, but what makes Tik Tok special for that task is how quickly it can expose you to many different songs in a short amount of time. It's impossible to hit the charts in 2019-2020 without it having a big presence on Tik Tok. Everyone from established stars such as Drake, to international K-Pop groups like BTS, to total unknowns like Powfu used Tik Tok to great success.

Death Bed has a catchy chorus, itself a sample of the song Coffee by indie rock artist Beabadoobee. The music of Beabadoobee (pronounced Be-ba-do-be) is a very dream-like indie rock with occasional acoustic tracks. Like a cross between Liz Phair, George Harrison, and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. As of the writing of this article, Beabadoobee has a critical acclaim and a loyal following that predates the success of Powfu. Boosted by the popularity of Death Bed, she charted in the alternative rock charts for the first time with the song Care in early 2020, but she's yet to break into the mainstream.

Like a TV commercial for the Islands of the Bahamas featuring Fly Away, the chorus to Death Bed/Coffee is played breathily in thousands of different Tik Tok videos. Some of which go viral and get millions of views. That drives people to discover the source of the clip. The cultural touchstone song isn't just a moment that you experience every once in a while during a TV commercial or a movie. It's around you far more frequently if you're a person on Tik Tok or other similar meme-driven platforms. Are you wondering why the very depressing Death Bed is the pop hit and not the more relaxing Coffee? The reason is likely that the original is a bit too slow for a 15 meme second video. The difference is subtle, but a small speedup can make the difference between a viral social media hit that becomes a pop song and an indie song that flies under the radar. 

It's hard to say what the future holds for this generation of pop music. Despite its popularity, Tik Tok itself may not be long for the USA market due to government policies and social media's very fickle nature. Assuming that current trends hold for several more years, it will be interesting to see how popular music that became popular because of Tik Tok ages with time. I think a lot of those hits may suffer long term damage due to social media overexposure. Could you be nostalgic for highly disposable memes that you're bombarded with years after the fact? 

Fly Away by Lenny Kravitz represents the model for traditional popular music. Chart first and then reoccur for years afterward. Death Bed represents how that model has been flipped. Reoccur on social media first and then use that momentum to chart.

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