Switched on Pop - Chartbreakers: Mitski tops the TikTok chart

Episode Date: October 24, 2023

It’s time for another edition of our series Chartbreakers, where we take a look at the trends and shakeups happening on the Billboard Hot 100. This week, however, the chart has been dominated by Drake and his album For All the Dogs, which takes up a grand total of 23 spots on the Hot 100. So, rather than do a story on that, Charlie and Nate take a look at the brand new TikTok Billboard Top 50 chart, established only last month. This chart – which measures the most popular songs on the platform through each song’s number of videos, views, and user engagement – perhaps best shows the things that are popular and pervasive among a contingent of younger music listeners. Here, there’s room for everybody from Mitski to Sexyy Red to J. Dash, highlighting that the music that’s popular isn’t necessarily what hits the radio. SONGS DISCUSSED Drake - First Person Shooter (feat. J. Cole) Mitski - My Love Mine All Mine Elvis Presley - Blue Moon SUICIDAL-IDOL - ecstacy (slowed) SUICIDAL-IDOL - ecstacy SUICIDAL-IDOL - ecstacy (super slowed) J. Dash - Wop (Official Version) CeeLo Green - I'll Be Around (feat. Timbaland) - Club Mix Paul Russell - Lil Boo Thang The Emotions - Best of My Love Will Smith - Gettin' Jiggy Wit It Sister Sledge - He's the Greatest Dancer - 1995 Remaster Will Smith - Miami The Whispers - And the Beat Goes On Will Smith - Wild Wild West (feat. Dru Hill & Kool Mo Dee) - Album Version With Intro Stevie Wonder - I Wish Will Smith - Men In Black - From "Men In Black" Soundtrack Patrice Rushen - Forget Me Nots - Remastered Sexyy Red - SkeeYee BabyTron - Crocs & Wock' Ice Spice - In Ha Mood Tyla - Water Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. So about every quarter, we've been doing this format called Chartbreakers, where we look deep at the Hot 100, other chart to see what's bubbling up, what's trending, and especially examine the outliers. Every quarter? What is this? A business? Like a Fortune 500 business? What? Your corporate past betrays you, Charlie. This is like four-hour music theory. The financial quarter is closing.

We look at the charts. There we go. And now you're speaking my language. There's this thing, you know, because of streaming, increasingly we see whole albums chart on Billboard's Hot 100 at the same time. This happens for Taylor Swift. It happens for many others. And right now it's happening for Drake's 23 song-long album for all the dogs. It's charting everywhere. Position 1, 2, 3, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 17, 17, 18, 21, 24, 26, 27, 29, 32, 32, 36, 37, and 42. What?

So today I thought rather than do a story on Drake Breakers, we could look at a different chart. Okay, what's that? Okay, so Billboard has a brand new chart for us to examine. It's the TikTok Billboard Top 50. It's a partnership between Billboard and TikTok's parent company Bite Dance that launched just last month on September 14th, 2020, 3, brand new chart. And this new chart is unlike any other. It may be one of the most diverse genre fragmented charts,

and I think that it reveals that how we listen and what is popular isn't necessarily tied to what's on the radio. All right, this is exciting. I mean, anytime there's a new Billboard chart, I'm here for it, and especially a TikTok chart, because I'm not on TikTok. I'm very curious to see how this chart sort of reflects the taste, and not only the taste, but like, the psychology of the TikTok generation.

So I'm here for this. Okay, I am on TikTok, and I have been paying attention, and so I've made a selection of a number of songs that I think are particularly notable on this chart. And we'll talk about how this chart works. But before we do, I just want to dive into the music. Let's listen to the TikTok Billboard number one hit, Mitzkis, My Love, Mine All Mine. So Mitzky is the indie artist whose sentimental songs have garnered her a very abhoring fan base.

And she's notoriously a private person, very uncomfortable with public life. Yet social media has pushed her further into the spotlight now with her biggest song, My Love, Mine All Mine. Nate, what are you picking up on the song? I mean, there's so much to love here. First of all, big picture. The fact that this song is the first one we're talking about is wild to me, because it's so soft and introspective, and it's not what I would expect to be, like, topping the viral

TikTok charts. I love that. That takes me by surprise. And when we go deeper into it, I mean, the first thing I hear, Charlie, is something that we talked about at length a few weeks ago with our episode about Faye Webster and the pedal steel guitar. Am I wrong? Is there not a dreamy saccharine pedal steel here? Yes.

Well, actually, you're wrong. That's not a saccharine pedal steel. That is a lacrimose pedal steel. I stand corrected. With delicate piano melodies that are falling like meteorites. I feel like the song is somewhere floating above Earth and the heavens. And it makes sense. This song is a plea to the moon.

What a strange lyric. She says, Moon, tell me. if I could send up my heart to you. So when I die, which I must do, could it shine down here with you? And then she contemplates impermanence and maybe even anti-capitalism, saying that nothing in this world belongs to me. But my love is mine, all mine. Love is the one thing that she can own.

Well, I love this lunar reference, Charles, because there was another musical technique here that, like the pedal steel, kind of harkens back. to a golden age of country music, the kind of sound you would hear at Sun Studios in Memphis, Tennessee, where Elvis Presley was recording. I hear a slapback echo on her voice. I heard the exact same thing. And you would hear that on a song like Elvis Presley's Blue Moon, another ode to a lunar fantasy.

Right, that slapback delay, it's like one echo of the voice, and it creates this feeling of, I don't know, for me, at least in the Mitzki, it's nostalgic and referencing the 50s, certainly, but it also makes her voice feel sort of ghostly, and there's this remove. It doesn't feel direct and right in front of you. You're talking to her through a medium, it feels like. Well, I'm surprised and delighted to encounter this intimate, dreamy, nostalgic Mitzki track at the top of the TikTok charts. But like, why? Like, what are people? Because I know TikTok, you know, people are making videos. What are people doing with this song?

I think that the song is putting TikTok users in their feelings, getting in touch with their emotions, making some very creative videos, including scrolling Emily Dickinson poems set to the backdrop of Mitzki, I think probably the most fun is a compilation mashup of the film Little Women, starring Timothy Shalameh and Strisha Ronan, splicing together, love scenes and dialogue again with Mitzki in the background, almost like the soundtrack that never happened. Give me an answer because I cannot go on like the day longer. I need the billiards, I gave up everything you didn't like. I'm happy I did.

It's fine, and I waited, and I never complained because I... You're not thinking you loved me, Joe. Oh my gosh. That's wonderful. There's also some very intimate videos of people posting themselves in bed, often not clothed with their loved ones, holding them in a delicate embrace. Should we make one of those, Charlie?

You and me? Yeah. Only if we can John and Yoko it. Oh, who's John? Who's Yoko? Ooh. Hmm. I'll be Yoko.

Okay. I'll be John. Back to TikTok. Yeah, back to TikTok. Okay. Mitzki is surprising us showing us that the Internet contains multitudes. And this song has done so well on TikTok that it has also pushed her onto the Billboard's Hot 100. As of this recording, the song has peaked at number 49 on Hot 100 as well.

And so we're seeing the move from social media into streaming into this thing that's charting on multiple streamers and dozens of nations. It's been playlisted on hits, playlist, pop playlist, viral playlist, mood playlist, indie playlist, alt playlists. And has had over a million video creations on TikTok and over 1.6 billion views on the platform. So this thing is really resonating and, you know, it makes sense. It sounds like a song that could have existed forever to me. This feels like it could have been an old spiritual, like I'll fly away or something. And I think the song is going to have some long legs. And at least in the history of this chart, it does because it's only the second song

to top the TikTok top 50 for more than one week in the chart's six week long existence. Okay, Charles, well, that info makes me want to ask a question because I know, a little bit about how the Billboard Hot 100 chart works. It aggregates different sources of listening, radio play, streaming, digital and physical purchases of music. How does the TikTok chart work? What data is Billboard using to map these songs? Well, they had to do this in partnership with ByteDance because they did need to collect the actual data. And data, data, data, what is it? I believe it's deta. Datta.

The exact weighting of how this list is made is not public. However, they have said that it is a combination of the number of videos made featuring a song, the number of views of those videos, and some kind of user engagement metric. It's also notable that TikTok is not included in the Hot 100. And so I think Billboard has probably felt some pressure to find a way to include it in its rankings. Because we've reported extensively that TikTok has been one of the main drivers of songs onto Billboard, not directly through being part of the formula, but by just driving culture. Really, since 2019 or so, we have interviewed on the show.

TikTok native artists like Benny and Tai Verdes, whose songs built a whole. career for them starting on TikTok. And of course, you know, Lil Nas X's Old Town Road would not have gone nearly as far, if not for TikTok. And even older songs like, you know, Fleetwood Max Dreams and Kate Bush is running up that hill have been revitalized on TikTok to find new audiences. And so there clearly has been this move from TikTok to just mainstream popularity. And it makes sense that we have this new chart.

Let's look at some other songs that are doing well on the TikTok 50, because for the most part, they don't really sound like what I would have expected on the Hot 100, and certainly, like, you know, four or five years ago. Okay. Okay, let's go to another artist who kind of like Mitzky is not a very public figure. In fact, we don't really know who this person is. It's an artist who has used the name Gore X. Shoddy and heartfelt, and is currently going by Suicidal Idol.

They have a song called Ecstasy, which was released a really, originally in July of 2021, but just went viral on TikTok in 2023, especially with a slowed-down remix of the song, Ecstasy. Here it is. Charlie, to be clear, that was the slowed-down version we just listened to, or that's the original version? That's the slow-down version. Huh. This reminds me of, like, the sound of TikTok when this platform first came out. I remember we interviewed pitchfork journalist Kat Zang about this, like, many moons ago.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like TikTok at that time was like this. It was like these like lo-fi sounds. The drums on this are really like crunchy and distorted. Yep. The vocal is like super processed. The lyrics are really intense and in your face. Like that Mitzky song, I was like, whoa, that's not what I expect.

This is what I expect from a TikTok chart, this kind of song. Yeah, it's like the new DIY. It has a punk like aesthetic and that it feels like it's made at home. It's not mixed to sound like a professional pop song. The vocals are kind of buried in the mix. Right. It's very pan genre. Right.

We have a four-to-the-floor beat, but with trap high hats, EDM synths, these lo-fi vocals. Yep. It's kind of hard to place. Yeah, yeah. But the vibe that I get from it is this very strange, uncomfortable pairing of romance with this very dark beat where suicidal idol is using the metaphor or perhaps literal use of Xx. to see the serotonin-inducing drug as a way of commenting on the desire for this other person. And it gets dark.

There's an uncomfortable power dynamic that's happening between these lovers. And I think we can hear it in the music as well. And you even pointed out, like, how could this be the slowed down version? Like, this already sounds like maybe there's something weird here. And if we listen to the original, it's even more unsettling. Now you know what I'm thinking, Charlie. If that's the original, is there a sped up version? And if so, am I prepared for it to hear that?

No, but there is a super slowed down version. Ah, okay. Fascinatingly, I feel like that's the closest we've come to hearing the actual singer's voice in any of these versions. Yeah, we don't know. I mean, the voice is so processed, it's hard to tell. And I like hearing these different versions because I think that, We know that as we slow the tempo down, the pitch also goes down. When we speed up, the pitch increases.

And I think this really plays with the perception of gender that we hear higher register voices and lower register voices. In a certain way, these different versions, I think, make the song feel more inclusive, that many people can see themselves in the singer's role. And it has succeeded. On TikTok, there are a lot of people using the sound. A lot of the videos are cosplaying and showing off goth fashion.

There's a lot of vampire content. There's some very strange videos that I don't understand about mewing. Do you know about mewing? It's not what you think. I mean, in the context of a kitten, I think I would, but I'm sure that's not what this is. It's this thing where if you place your tongue on the roof of your mouth in just the right way, supposedly it improves your jaw line and portrait because the internet is totally messed up and has destroyed everyone's self-image. And so people are showing off how to mew properly with this song in the background,

probably because there's this lyric sticking out your tongue for the picture. I'm trying it right now, Charlie, meowing. I feel like it makes me look constipated. I might not be doing it right. We'll return to that. Okay, so far we have one song that totally defies your expectations of what you would think is happening on the internet with Mitzki. And then with this song, Ecstasy, maybe confirms a little bit more about what you thought was going to happen on TikTok. Indeed.

Yeah. The other trend, which I mentioned earlier, that happens on TikTok all the time, is old songs having new life. And so there's a number of songs that reference what's old and bringing them into a new generation. The first song, currently at number 12, is J-Dash's WAP. J-Dash was a one-hit wonder rapper from Florida, who proves that some memes have a very long life because WAP was originally recorded in 2007 and posted to YouTube where it found viral fame

with user-created dances. It was officially released in 2011 with rapper FloRida and had a second wave of virality in 2013 when Miley Cyrus posted a video dancing to it. Because Billboard had actually added YouTube views into the Hot 100 algorithm, WAP charted in February of 2013, peaking at number 51.

And now we are in its third wave of virality. WAP has become a TikTok dance. One of the biggest videos of it today has over 2.1 million plays. Fabulous, Charlie. One of the things I love the most about TikTok is the way it can take this obscure detritus of popular culture and suddenly thrust it back into the mainstream in the most

unpredictable ways. This is a fun track. It's such a late 2000s, early 2010's kind of hip hop track. The EDM synths give it away as something which is definitely not contemporary. But it makes me wonder maybe that marriage of hip-hop grooves with EDM since, maybe that's going to have a life again, which I wouldn't mind, you know, that was what was happening in our college years, definitely soundtrack to an early, an important time in our life. A little bit of a crunk in there, perhaps even. Hmm, yeah, nice, from our episode on The History of Crunk. So this is not the only song, which is making a comeback.

We also have Seelows All Be Around featuring Timbaland originally from 2003. It's right now at number 45. Cila Green, of course, is known for his collaboration in Narls Barkley on the song Crazy and the song forget you, which we covered years ago. But, you know, I'm kind of surprised to see Seelow back in the picture. He was kind of internet canceled before that became a thing. He has been accused of sexual battery. He's made abhorrent statements on Twitter about sexual assault. Leading to him, I think having a meaningful decline in his career, he was kicked out of music festivals, his reality TV show was canceled, even though the networks disputed that this was the reason why.

And he really went from being, you know, someone on the charts to Cilowell's. list celebrity doing TV work on shows like Lib Sync Battle and The Masked Singer. He made appearance at the World Aquatic Championship in Budapest, kind of like chasing, you know, whatever you can make of a late stage career. But I think this song shows us that no one really is canceled on the internet, especially if their music is memeable, for better or worse. You know, this is a ridiculous song with some kind of like obnoxiously obvious innuendo. But what's undeniable about the song, I think, is the Timbaland beat.

and people have picked it up and used it as a dance challenge now, showing off their new Jordan sneakers, dressing up before going out and putting dance moves to it all over TikTok. This takes me back, Charlie. And I was so disappointed in Seelow because he was an artist I really enjoyed. This track, this was like the soundtrack of my, I guess, my senior year of high school. This was, I loved this, I love this song. I love this Timbalin production.

And, you know, if the song is making a comeback primarily based on that, that infectious beat, like, good for that, good, good for that track. Not maybe downplaying the inane lyrics and just celebrating the intense funkiness of this Timbalin production. Okay, so I'm not surprised by this trend of bringing old songs back into consciousness, but I am kind of surprised by our next song, which reaches deep into the past in popular music in a number of fun and surprising ways. We're going to listen to that right after the break.

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Nate, I know you're a big fan of earth, wind, and fire. I'm into earth and wind, fire, you know, take it or leave it. Sorry, that was a dad joke. No, yeah, yeah. You used to be the king of the dad jokes, and then I had my own kids, and now, unfortunately, I've joined you in this purgatory. I've passed the baton. Well, I was surprised when I heard the song, Lil Bouthing by the artist Paul Russell, which is currently number 15 on Billboard's TikTok chart. It was released just in August of 2023, and it has a sample of the song,

Best of My Love, by the Emotions, written by Earth, Wind, and Fire artist Al McKay and Maurice White. Here's Lil Boothing, Uniting, The Old and the New. So here we have a pure TikTok hit. Paul Russell was working a desk job when he was also on the side. trying to build a TikTok following. And one night, here's the emotions, singing Best of My Love, this great instrumental intro,

and he thinks that would be an awesome backing track. And so he sings over Best of My Love, posts it to TikTok. It blows up. He quickly has to scramble and write the rest of the song. Really? Yeah, because the TikTok video is quite short. Then he, of course, he had to go get permission

to actually license the song properly, which took a bunch of time. Put it out, this song has been a huge hit. It too has gone from TikTok over to Billboard Talk 100, peaking at 51, and I dig it because I really love

the original sample. Yeah, this 1977 track by The Emotions has so much going on. I love how TikTok has the ability to revive these great songs from the past and give them new life. And when I was listening to this,

I was like, oh yeah, I'm familiar with this, But then I was like kind of checking in with some of the details of it. Like there's stuff I'd never heard before, even though I've heard the song so many times. I know. I feel like this is such a staple. Like I think of this as wedding dance floorcore. It's something you've heard so many times. It was almost hard to hear new.

What did you pick up on? Well, one detail I love is this French horn counter melody that you get in the chorus. How did I never hear this before, Charlie? It's like, what is Mendelssohn doing in this track? It's crazy. I feel like any time I go to a wedding now, if they don't give me that French horn solo, I'm going to look very askance at the wedding band. Yeah, you're going to be like miming the, you're going to be doing like some people do air guitar.

Charlie's going to be doing air French horn on the dance floor. The only one, the only one. What else did you pick up on? Anything else? Okay, the other thing that I clocked about this song happens in this section. I'm not sure even what to call it. Is it a bridge? Is it a post-chorus?

But the harmonies that the emotions deliver in this section are so sharp, so tight. It's like this is an era of music where everyone was just operating at the top of their game. It's so cool to hear. That is beautiful. I feel like, oh, what great evidence for the power of a sibling group, sisters all singing together. The way they hit those backgrounds, do, do, do, do. And they just go higher and higher. And they're just like harmonizing them higher and higher.

I was listening to this. I was like, this is insane. I don't know. This is one of those songs that, like you were saying, it's so omnipresent. Maybe you kind of take it for granted. It's cool that Paul Russell redoing it makes you revisit the original and be like, this is astonishing. So props to the TikTok charts, Charlie, for bringing us back to best of my love and the emotions. So it's going all the way back to the 70s, but I also feel like it's taking us to the 90s because

for me, we have the big Willie formula here, right? Where Paul Russell, like Will Smith of past, would take really popular, like essential R&B soul disco samples and kind of Kind of just play them exactly as is, and then wrap over them. Let me remind you, we've got Getting Jiggy with it. Snatches the groove of Cister Sledges, he's the greatest dancer. Will Smith's Miami was built from the whispers and the beat goes on. I can't believe he thought that he could make Wild Wild West. From the bones of Stevie Wonders, I wish.

and let us not forget men in black, which reworks Patrice Russian's iconic melody on Forget Me Nots. And I have to admit, growing up in the 90s, when I heard these Will Smith songs, I was like, these are great. These are original songs, and I love them. And I later got to find out their amazing source material. So I imagine lots of young people are feeling the same way

about this new Paul Russell track. And to bring everything full circle, Will Smith himself, who has a YouTube vlog. Okay. Recently did a dance video to a song by Paul Russell and Rushlin, their song, Breeze.

Yeah, you know, I would, you know, do it, but it's like... It's a breeze, boy, I told you, it's a breeze. Yeah, it's a breeze, but I told you, it's a breeze. The student has become the master. I mean, first of all, anytime we talk about Patrice Rush and I have to give a shout out, she's my boss.

Right, right. I just need to pay homage to the legend Patrice Russian. And I love this, Charlie. I mean, the big Willie formula. That sounds like something you would find in a scientific textbook about success in the music industry. The big, like, you know, X classic song squared plus Y contemporary musical reference squared equals T. TikTok World's conquering

algorithmic power. So you're saying that my former corporate mind may actually serve a purpose in authoring some future TikTok hit formula book for music business students?

I think it's all led to this, Charlie. Your parapetetic path from the corporate boardrooms to the home podcast studio this is what it's all been working towards. Speaking of some home bread music. I feel like we should go to some more TikTok hits. Let's.

At number 22, we have Sexy Red in her song, Skiye. It was actually the first number one TikTok top 50. It landed there on September 14th. It's been hanging on the Billboard TikTok chart. It's even made it onto the Hot 100,

peaking at 62. It's the fourth single from her hood hottest princess mixtape. Here is Sexy Red's Skiy. Charlie, this is why doing Try Breakers is so fun because we go from this old school mashup to like the most modern hip hop track. Like, tell me, tell me everything about this. Well, Sexy Red is having a breakout 2023. She's worked with Nikki Minaj.

She's been featured on that Drake album on the song Rich Baby Daddy. Currently, the song is at number 11 on Hot 100. Also, number 37 on the TikTok charts. And she's found a very memeable song. with Ski Yi, which she has explained as a type of cat call. And the song is notable to me because it's doing this thing that we

keep hearing over and over on the show that as a musician, I generally find kind of unsettling at first. I feel like she's constantly rushing the beat. Check it out. Here's the vocal in isolation to a click track. If you see me and you trying to see what's up.

He want to fuck with me, then I'm a half stupid butt. Like right there when she says Skiye, the Yee, happens before the click. She's rushing. Sometimes I think some of the flow is also after the beat. It's a little loose.

Wow. That's pretty cool. Yeah. It has this particular flow that I want it to be like tighter. And I actually spent like an hour last night trying to time the vocal to the instrumental to be like more on the beat.

And I've really kind of struggled with it. A lot of people have commented and said, oh, sexy red can't rap. There's no talent here. And yet I feel like she's in a class of a new rap style that just is frankly looser with its relationship to rhythm, if you will. We heard our producer, Rihanna Cruz, brought us BabyTron

on the episode that they did about the art of flow. Indeed, yeah. BabyTron is all over the beat. He's not alone. We've talked at length also about rapper Ice Spice, who is one of the big rising stars right now. And her music, Rihanna also described the flow here as unbothered,

which to me is kind of all over the beat sometimes, sometimes ahead of the beat, sometimes behind the beat. Like damn, she and her move. Like damn, she and her move. Like damn, she and her move. Like damn, she and her move. She lit. Get money too.

Like damn, she and her move. When we were talking about the second song we listened to, Ecstasy. You said it kind of confirmed your expectations about the TikTok sound, which we have looked at in the past, the sort of DIY kind of feel. There is always this push and pull between pop sounding too polished and professional and more independent kind of sounds rising up to be the expression of how people are feeling at any given moment. And I think this looser flow that we hear on Sexy Red, that we hear on Ice Spice,

that we hear on BabyTron. It's connecting with people. And so it means something. It might not immediately gel with what I like, but I think that it is a new approach to rhythm in a certain way. Well, I feel like it's aligned with the function of the song. I mean, in Sexy Red, that song is like trying to get you hyped up, right?

It's powerful. It's intense. It's like the soundtrack that you're going to put on when you're like going out and trying to get pumped up. And so maybe those, like, faster vocals kind of support that. I spice, I think she's trying to do something a little different. She's trying to project a certain, like, kind of nonchalance and coolness.

And so, like, having this, like, unbothered, sometimes behind the beat flow maybe connects us to that image. So, well, is it fair. Yeah, yeah. You know, it's not arbitrary, I guess, is what I'm saying. Like, it's either a calculated or instinctive decision by these artists to adopt these certain flows that reinforce their lyrical sensibility. Yeah, and it's frankly quite different than the generation before them.

Right now, Drake and Jekyll are on the top of Billboard's Hot 100 and adhere to a different standard and expectations about how your flow should match up to rhythm. These things are ever-changing, and I like that the TikTok chart helps us get a picture into what people are listening to in a different way. It's a different kind of gatekeeper. Yeah.

The TikTok chart is not necessarily the people's chart. It's the bite dance algorithm chart. But it does include a lot of user engagement. And in an era of playlisting, I'm always questioning. How much can we determine what people are listening to with intent? And what are they listening to because it just gets served to them. And I think TikTok is just yet another way of looking at how we're exposed to different kinds of music. And certainly this new style is resonating with folks.

Hmm. Okay, so moving on, I want to listen to the song Water by Tyler, a South African pop, Amma Piano artist. Amma Piano is a South African house subgenre with sort of lounge and jazz and deep house and piano melodies. She has her song, Water, released in July of this year. It's currently number 17 on Billboard's TikTok chart. The song is a smash. It is charting in 17 countries.

It's also on the Hot 100, number 63, making it the first South African solo artist to have a song on the Hot 100 in 55 years. Whoa. Yeah, the last was Hugh Masakela with grazing in the grass from 1968. Wow, wild. This song is connecting. So I don't think I'd heard this track before you just played for me, Charlie, and I am just really taken with it. It has this coolness. It has this sense of taking its time.

I like how Tyler has these long pauses between each of the. lines that sort of allow you to just focus in on this kind of slinky, sensual beat. It's a cool track. It flows like water. Yeah. Even the synthesizer underneath is this sine wave synth. It has this very fluid kind of sound gliding between each note totally captures the feel of this song. It's just a very sexy song. It's got a driving rhythm. It's got a great chorus with very syncopated rhythms, super danceable. And that's what has really made it a hit. Tila went on Tick-Tock and said, hey, you got to do this dance to it. And so people are now doing a hip-jurking dance in which

they pour water down their back to varying degrees of success on Tick-Tock. And the hashtag Tila water and Tyler Water Challenge have been viewed many hundreds of millions of times on TikTok. So I love seeing how this platform, which I actually forgot to mention at the beginning, this chart is a U.S. chart, meaning it's only looking at U.S. TikTok data to send the billboard. It's bringing in global hits like Tyler from South Africa. So it makes me think of like the promises of the early Internet. in which a democratized landscape of people get to share things and cross-culturally.

And sometimes that happens, and I think it's a beautiful thing. Yeah, the way so many users reuse and recast and change the meaning of musical material is really exciting. It's like one of the best things about the platform, even though there is a lot to, you know, maybe be concerned about. I use the word democratic. I mean, that is a hot-button issue, I should say. when we talk about TikTok, which has been called out by various American officials for maybe potentially having too close to relationship with the Chinese government. By dance is a Chinese company after all. And yet, as you were saying, that creative spirit is like, cannot be contained.

And locating that and seeing that reflected in these TikTok charts is like maybe the best part of this experience to me. I feel like we have seen the TikTok charts show us that we really live in this. era of fragmented genre. There is no consensus sound. The fact that we go from Mitzki to that very DIY song, ecstasy, we get all this throwback stuff. We've got the big Willie style formula, new styles of rap, South African Alma piano. We're really all over the chart. And it makes me think that people are finding new and creative ways of expressing themselves outside the boundaries of traditional genre. And I really dig it. Amen, Chuck. See you next quarter.

Next Fistle quarter after we crunch the numbers. Yeah, I'll make sure to bring my strategy report. Report to the stockholders. You're going to be really upset when I published that big Willie Formula book and you're not included. It's going to be a hit. No, we have a Lenin-McCartney-style agreement. I get half of everything. Switch on Pop is produced by Rihanna Cruz, edited by Jolie Myers, engineered by Brandon McFarland,

illustrations by Iris Gottlieb, our community managers, Abby Barr, an executive producer, Ashok Kerwa. Remember of the Vox Media Podcast Network and a production of Vulture. Hit us up on the social media at Switchedompop and tell us what you were ticking and talking to on the apps.

What did we miss? What's out there that we need to hear? We are all ears. And if you go over to our website, www.switchonpop.com, you will find some enticing merch. We're talking mugs, Charlie. We're talking totes.

We're talking laptops. sleeve shirts. I mean, everything you need for the modern citizen. I feel like we're missing some professorial shoulder pads because I think this week you really have shown your age. And I think we're going to have to print some tweed jacket with my shoulder pads just so. You have shown your sartorial limitations because I think you meant to say elbow patches. Oh my shoulder pads. You don't want some 80s suit style. Okay. No. We both. We both. We both need a David Burns suit and we need a, yes, and we need a professorial elbow patches jacket. Okay.

There we go. Noted. I'll get it designed. I've told you my idea for an express clothing alteration service, right? What? Taylor Swift. Oh, my God. Okay.

You can join us next Tuesday. We'll be back. And until then, thanks for listening. Thanks for listening. We need to get like a dad joke alarm. Me, ba-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h.