Switched on Pop - Tai Verdes TikTok-ed his way to a breakout hit

Episode Date: December 14, 2021

Whether you’re a TikTok fanatic, or the app’s K-hole-inducing stream of content has forced you to delete it from your phone, its influence on music is undeniable. In 2020 the platform bragged that over 70 artists on the platform signed with major labels. TikTok’s success was linked to pandemic-related stay-at-home orders -- people were stuck at home and musicians couldn’t tour. And while trending dances and songs on TikTok may turn over weekly, with a billion monthly users, the social media platform has industry power. In 2021, Billboard’s Hot 100 was overflowing with TikTok hits -- over 175 according to the company -- more than twice that of last year.  While major artists like J Balvin and Taylor Swift use the platform, TikTok’s algorithm is surprisingly good at exposing aspiring artists. Take Tai Verdes for example. While working his day job at the Verizon store. Ty set his mind on using TikTok to launch his musical career. When he released a video singing his song “Stuck In The Middle” in his Prius, millions saw him for the first time. Tai’s music has since been heard at Lollapalooza and on Top 40 radio. But like so many overnight successes, he built it up over years of practice and creative releases. If you want to know how social media has fundamentally changed music, you need to hear Tai’s Verdes tell his story to Switched On Pop’s Charlie Harding. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you're tired of endless scrolling to figure out where to eat, same. I'm Stephanie Wu, editor-in-chief of Eater. We've just launched the new-ish and way better Eater app. It has all the restaurants we love, gives you personalized picks wherever you are, and serves up smarter search results just for you. You can find my list of the best places for martinis and fries in New York City. And save your favorite spots, share lists, follow editors, and book right in the app. the Eater app at Eaterapp.com. It's free for iOS users. Welcome to Switched on Pop. I'm

songwriter Charlie Harding. Probably the biggest story in music over the past two years has been the way that the social media platform TikTok took over the industry. I feel like I waffle between TikTok skepticism and sometimes fanaticism on probably a weekly basis. But it's undeniable that its endless waterfall of short form videos have upended music discovery and shifted musical taste. The algorithm will show you videos you like, usually would license music in the background as backing tracks. Take a song like Ty Verde's A-O-K. While working his day job at the Verizon store, Ty set his mind on using TikTok to launch his musical career. If you want to know how social media has fundamentally changed music, you need to hear Ty's story.

Here's where it all started in early 2020. It probably begins in a living room of, of an LA apartment. I was living at the cheapest means possible. I had a Home Depot made shelf on the side with like cinder blocks and wood. And then I also had a bed from Craigslist. See this right here?

This is supposed to be a living room, but I put up some sheets and now I live in it. The living was big enough to where there was like a tiny little passageway to where the bathroom was and then it opened up into a kitchen. So every morning I'd hear my roommates who really loved making smoothies at 8 a.m. God dang, I just, living alone will be peaceful.

Ty had been staying in this living room for nearly four years, trying every odd job in Hollywood from acting to podcasting, anything that would get him his own place. He was getting by, but his real passion was for music. I really like singing, and I would watch videos of guys singing, and just be like, wow, this guy can sing. this guy can sing. They must have been working on that for their entire life. I know if they can work on it, I can work on it. So I didn't have a space to like sing loudly. So I was underneath my building in this underground garage in my car, which is like the only quiet space. And I would just sing there. I was in the car, in a garage, working on these vocal exercises for like an hour or half every single day for like six months. This is after I had not passed, I. single round of American Idol of the voice of any of those singing competitions. And that's what I

used to do just like as like a anniversary of me coming to LA. I would like write a song and then go to these auditions. I'd wait whatever it is like nine hours just to sing for two minutes. And then no one would say anything. They would just be like, all right. And then you'd go home. But then of course, the world shut down. And he was sheltered in place in his three walled room, working on songs and trying to gain traction on TikTok, which everyone seemed to have discovered during the pandemic. Some of his early attempts were not that graceful. For example, his song, Skin Routine.

She put me on a skin routine. Now I'm looking so fresh and clean. Exfoliating up all my paws. Now I'm putting her on our fours. Hot-draided, about to make it. Oh, baby. Be patient. Oh, my gosh.

Can you tell me about that song and how you go about it? When I made Skin Routine, I had TikTok. and I was like, okay, I can do this whole campaign where I'm like, people can show me their skin routine. That'll be the trend. But yeah, I started paying people. Now you're probably thinking, what about the money? The money's important. I like money.

The first 100 people to make a TikTok of themselves doing their skin routine to my song, dancing to my song, doing anything to my song, they're going to get paid out based on these brackets. Like 10 bucks, 20 bucks to use my song in their videos to sing it, rap it, whatever. You are utterly shameless about, I'm going to pay you to use my song. Yeah. How did that sensibility develop for you? My mentality is that it's really close to 50-50, the song quality and the actual promotion of the song. Every song has the ability, if it's good enough, like that's what I'm saying, it has to get to that 50% to reach an audience, but you have to show them that it's out. If you're nobody, you have to do something wild to get things started.

Now when I see people paying for their song, it's not the best idea. But in these ripe spaces where no one's going to remember, like in these new spaces of social media where no one's going to remember anything. Like, do they remember Justin Bieber from YouTube? No. Do they remember Sean Mendez going on and playing six seconds of a song just trying to show that he's riffing? You know what I'm saying? That's when you can be experimental and like kind of do that sellout stuff where you're like, hey, let's let's amp this up a little bit so that we can get this platform going. What happens?

Nothing. Nothing happens. I think that maybe it gets a couple thousand streams, but like in reality, I pay these people. They use the song, but no one really gravitates to it. So I was like, you know what? Next song. Let's try again. And I think the real transition into Ty Verdes was when I actually practiced, you know, singing.

Because I had the ability to, like, create a story and, like, tell a story and stuff like that. What's up, guys? My name is Ty Verides. And I'm a salesperson at a Verizon store. It's one of my favorite jobs that I've ever had. But I'm just not satisfied because I want to be a singer. I want to be an artist. So after I worked on my voice for a long time, I went to the studio. Ty tries his hand in recording some songs and plays them back for his brother. I don't think he likes any of my music. And then my brother told me, you have to hook people in the first two lines.

And that's what I live by now. It's like, your premise has to be so good that you need to know what's next. When I go up into my apartment for the next like two weeks, I'm like thinking, all right, whatever. He doesn't like my song. Oh, my gosh. So then I was going through a toxic relationship, right? And I was just like listening to YouTube beats Because that's how I find my music, right?

A lot of the album is YouTube beats. Yeah, explain what that means. So that means a producer is trying to sell his beats. He'll sell them for like 10 bucks to use like MP3. The whole vibe of the internet is a lot of rap beats, a lot of trap beats, a lot of lofi beats. But there's not a lot of like instrumental indie stuff that's just floating around. I'm on the seventh level of hell of YouTube every single night. I'm going on YouTube searching like Harry Styles type beat or something like that.

And then after going around, I found this beat that had like a thousand views, which is so small. Usually a lot of these beats have like 50,000 to 100,000, maybe a million views on them because they're so good and people like rap over them, try to do their songs over them. I knew that I had to have something that wasn't viewed a lot because I needed it to be mine. I had to buy it eventually if something worked. So I found this beat, this guy named Red Mosque in France.

And I loved it. Just that bass in the beginning, that... I was like, this is amazing. So I go out and I'm just listening to it. And then I'm just like, okay, first line, first line. And then my toxic X kind of pops in my head and I'm just like, She said, you're a player, aren't you? And I bet you got holes.

And that was like the epitome of starting with a good premise, what's next? Because if you start with a good premise, it's so much easier to write the rest of the lyrics. So then after I said that line, it kind of just fell out of me. It was like, okay, just keep talking about this conversation that you had been in this Friends with Benefit situation with. I said, you don't know me like that. I just go with the flow She said You can't fool me like that

You're gonna leave me on red Yeah my ex hated that song With a pure Hatred fire in her In her heart You're stuck in the middle Of lovers and friends And we're losing every part of the

You play piano You play piano, ukulele, guitar, you sing. Yeah. But you kind of find this cheat code of like, I'm going to find fully produced songs and use my best talent, which is the storytelling lyric, melody. How do you come upon that way of working? Because I see how everybody else was doing it. I can make leaps and bounds if I have a guitar player who's playing guitar for years and get the feel. and be like, that's what you should play,

compared to me learning hours and hours of guitar and piano and learning how to play into a studio. Because I can play it, but I've never played. I've never tried to track something to a loop before. I could probably learn how to do it, but I'm not, that's not my goal. My goal was to be a singer, and I knew that with my skills right now, that on guitar and piano, ukulele, it wasn't going to sound authentic.

Does it change your relationship to the music, knowing that, hey, this is coming off of YouTube as opposed to it's the thing that you did in the studio? No, because it's about the feel of the song. It doesn't matter where it comes from. I have the whole song written out. And then I have the YouTube beat. And then now I need to structure it to make it have a pre-chorus, chorus and whatever. I structured it to match the lyrics and whatever.

I go and track it. It takes a day. There were some issues with it. Then I go back in like a week and a half. And then I fix it. And then on my drive back. That was the first time I had listened to my own music back on the high. way and enjoyed it to the point where I was like smiling windows down.

And I ever knew, but it's shitty because I'm doing the same to you. And it was amazing. So you're viving to it in the car. It's working for you. What happens? I was vibing and I was having a good time, but it wasn't the best. It's not like I got out of that car thinking, this is the best song. This song is going to go gold.

You know what I'm saying? Like, I did not think that. I thought, all right, this is good enough. That was my entire mindset. This is good enough. Put it on TikTok the next day, and then that's when the story starts. That's where you can see it all on TikTok. I go in my car, open the door, sit on my phone, play the song.

She said, you're a player, aren't you? And I bet you got holes. I said, you don't know me like that. I'll just go with the floor. And I was like, hey, if this gets a thousand likes, I'm going to put it on Spotify. I was going to put it on Spotify anyway. Like, I was going to put on all of it. I was going to put everything everywhere.

Right when I put it up, 10,000 plays. And that never happened to me before. What's happening in your mind as you're watching this happen? To be honest, it was so gradual. It was so gradual. I was like 10,000. This is cool because I knew 100,000 views. It wasn't a lot.

I've seen people get 5 million views. I've seen people get 10 million views on TikTok. I was like, okay, this is a start. I can start with this. And then I post another video the next day of like the pre-chorus. And then it gets another 100,000 views. And I'm like, okay. All right, people.

This is another part of my new song called Stuck in the Middle. All right. This is the chorus. If you got a friends with benefits, this is your mother fucking anthem. Send it to them right now. Tag them in the comments if you're a real one. All right, here we go. My song was never a song that went crazy out of the gate.

It didn't have a trend. There was nothing attached to it, which I think was a blessing because trends die. Why is it connecting? I think because they're going through the same thing. And some people probably swip past my video as well. But then some people saw me in their car and they were like, you're a player, aren't you? I bet you got hope.

dang someone said that to me oh i actually said that to someone like a girl i said and then now they're like now i need to go find this song and that video was the promotion tool to get people to go because in the video i have a comment saying like this song is live you can go search it my name is tyberdes you can go search it right now i just have so much passion for this but i just released this song stuck in the middle on apple music and it would mean the world to me if you guys would listen to it And then it just leads, bleeds into the music. It's crazy because right when I put it on Spotify, you could see people going from TikTok to Spotify. People seem to also really connect with the fact that you've got like a day job at the same time.

Exactly. And working at the Verizon store. How could I forget the Verizon store? What if I told you that this random college dropout that you're seeing on your screen right now started a Spotify page two months ago? And in that two months? He's gotten 2.5 million streams. Been featured on Rolling Stone. The number one on the U.S. viral charts.

Had a piece written on him on Lyrical Lemonade. And has multiple record deals. And he still works at motherfucking Verizon. That'd be pretty fucking crazy, right? I had, like, all the heads of all these companies calling me at Verizon during my work break. I was like on with like the CEO of capital records, you know, for 15 minutes. And I tell him, I'm sorry, we got to reschedule because I have to sell these phones. You know what I'm

saying? Like I told people that I worked. Everybody works. And that's something that people relate to. You know, when you see like a Justin Bieber, a Camilla Cabo, Sean Mendez, it's hard to imagine them at Subway. You know what I'm saying? But it's, it was easy to imagine me at subway because I showed you me at Verizon, you know, working. So now that people have this baseline of like, oh, this is a regular guy that had a job. In reality, I kind of wasn't a regular guy. I had a social media experience. I had a, I had musical background. I had like parents that allowed me to go have music. I had a lot of advantages that I'm super thankful for. But, um, yeah, I portrayed myself as this person, which I was at the time.

as this new artist that was really trying to get it. I think a lot of people love that type of like underdog story. This song has yet more of a life. Like you're telling your story. People are connecting with it. They're following you more on TikTok. Yeah. Because guess what was behind that video is my song.

My song was the soundtrack to the video. So that's just another placement, right? There's another thing that's gotten a million views that has my song playing the entire time. So then I keep going. I keep doing like maybe little parody little dances. I keep talking about the song, reaching different accolades. I meet my managers, Ryan and Brandon. And I showed them the rest of my demos.

At this time, while the song was blowing up, it had been like two or three months. I had made more songs. And one of the first producers that they introduced me to was Adam Friedman. And then that's how I started making, you know, more of the album was after I met Adam Friedman. What's different in the approach that you all bring to writing? Yeah. Adam Friedman is this producer who has worked with Mike Posner, the Black Eye P's, and right away when we met, I had so many questions because I had been just thrust into

label conversation. So I was asking Adam because Adam had also been an artist who had some success. First session, all we did was talk. We talked for like six hours about like every question I had. He tells me about all the label stuff, all the music stuff, how songs should be made, what feels good, feel in general. And then the next time we meet up, we make a song, and it's trash. It's so bad. But because of the back and forth we built up, the next song that we made was drugs. He comes into the studio. We start talking again for the third time.

I'm kind of disheveled because I'm like, God, this guy, we made a terrible song. I don't even want to go back, to be honest. But you never know. You always got to give people a second try. And then we start talking. He says, you know what? I had to actually go take a walk to go to Target when I was. at my parents' house recently, and then I smoked some weed on the way because, you know,

yeah, I had to relax, and he smokes weed, you know? And I was like, oh, how don't you just write the song about that? And I was like, yeah, sometimes you do drugs. Why don't you tell your mom, sometimes you do drugs? And I was like, oh, yeah. Sometimes I do drugs, not hard ones, just ones that change my mind up. Drugs. Sometimes I do drugs, not hard ones, just ones that changed my mind up. That for me was so easy and so real that it was like the first time I was with somebody else that I was, and we were like jumping up and down in a studio, freaking out because we had made something that we thought was just super original, sounded good, and felt good.

We just were on a roll after that. After drugs, we got in, the next song we made was we would have some cute kids, right after. That was the next song. That was literally the actual next song we made. And then after that we made feelings bad never felt so great. And those are like the top two to four performing songs on my album. Okay, so what happens after these sessions? So after the sessions, after we get this, we build up some records. And then I'm like, we're sitting on a lot of ammo right now.

And I'm just feeling super confident because I have drugs. We'd have some cute kids. And then stuck in the middle is still moving. Right. And then I just, I'm, I'm super relaxed. But I'm also not when stuck in the middle kind of is like tapering off. It's grown to 100,000, 200,000, 300, then kind of stays. It became like a trending song on TikTok.

But then it's been six months. Like, I want to be an artist. Not a trend. Yeah, not a trend. Spotify, has got a new Good Girl Jasmine Absolute of

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let you involve to envolverver for their own social media isn't creating a viral

song. It's creating the second one and the third one. Yet Tyveritis is His persistence pays off for him, and his next song, Drugs, is a hit. But with one limiting downside.

I decide in October to put drugs out, and immediately we go viral again with one of my most viral videos, with him and me singing it together. I don't want to tell my mom I smoke this week. I don't want to tell my dad he'll call me weed. And we sing drugs and we get a million views on that video. And then we sing it again and we get like five million views on a video. And because of the subject matter, you know, we had conversations of putting it on radio, but no one would take it. I was too new of an artist and also it's about drugs.

You know what I'm saying? The most lighthearted song about drugs. Yeah, most like, and I was like, are you guys really? I literally say after drugs, not hard ones. But it doesn't matter. But I was also so confident. I was like, we don't even need the radio. We got, we'd have some cute kids.

I was so happy about the songs that we were making that I was like, you know what, radio whatever. It's never going to be one song. Even if it was a big radio smash, it's never going to be one song. Like you have to build albums. You have to build worlds. You have to build music videos. Like I always know, like my whole goal, this entire time, has been 15-year career, not five-month career. At this point, Ty's viral success had earned him enough to get his own place.

He quit his job at Verizon live on TikTok, his boss. even congratulated him. It's very sweet. But obviously, Ty had much bigger ambitions. His songs had been playlisted on Spotify, but he still wanted to make a song that would break into top 40 radio. So one day, Ty is working with his producer. Adam shows me this guitar loop, the A-OK guitar loop, and I'm like, I'm using that.

Like, the guitar, like, it just feels good. Doesn't this guitar sounds so good? Like, I don't know somebody who can listen to that song and be like, no, that doesn't feel good to me. Unless they don't want to be happy. If you don't want to be happy, the song's not for you. It's probably kind of annoying if you don't want to be happy. But if you do want to, if you do want to just, like, be a listener and you hear that guitar, it's going to feel good. So you feel this thing. You're feeling good.

Yeah, I'm feeling good. So I hear the guitar loop. This is one of the songs that was like kind of like puzzle piece together. He had worked on the song for like four years. And then Adam went in, redid the drums. and redid the feel of the chorus and now it sounds like a different type of record but the thing is the vocal wasn't there yet

I go in and then I hear the song I'm like this is okay but it didn't hit with me right away but I did love the guitar lick in the beginning I didn't know what it was yet but I'm using it and I would listen to it and I was like this song sounds weird

I don't know why I don't like it why don't you move the chorus in the front because it didn't used to have Living in this big blue world. It didn't used to start at the front. It used to be some verse. Living in this big blue world with my head up and out of space. I know I'll be a-o-a-o-k.

I know I be a-o-a-oh. So that's what I'm saying about feel is that I, like, would structure the beat to make it feel the best that I thought possible. Now I go in and I'm like, what can make this song just better? And the hook was so good. I was like, let's just put. the hook in the, I didn't like any of the verses, I didn't really like the bridge. Let's just go in, put the hook in the beginning, and then start there.

We go in and cut it. Now I go in, write a quick verse, first verse. I wrote that in like, I don't know, 30 minutes. And then I go in and write the bridge. I'd be lying if I said I knew the way. I just eat shit and pretend that it's gourmet. And one of my favorite lines is like, I just eat shit. and pretended it's gourmet, one of my favorite lines

that I've ever written. And yeah, over the melody that was already there. They had, uh-da-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na. That was already in there, but I just changed the lyrics in there. Just the entire vibe of the song changed

after all those elements, all those tiny little elements were changed. It became my song. Now, when the chorus hit in the front, and I put that on TikTok, that was kind of like the closing moment of this, like, why I'm here right now is because that video has like 20 million views. I just want to make you feel 2% better when you listen to this song.

That's it. Just two. Ready? That was the first time that something that I put on the internet went viral on meme pages, on TikTok, that transcended social media where I got on the radio, I got on TV, I did late night because of A.O.K. me going in the car and seeing living in this big blue world. I remember there was a TikTok of yours that I watched where you had this stated goal of getting a song on Billboard by the summer. One of my goals is to have one of my singles hit on Billboard charts a song.

It would need so much to me if you stream the song. Yeah, I did have that video. Yeah. AOK gets you there. Yeah, it does. basically it gets a million views in like two a million streams in like two days you know what another thing happened after a okay went viral is that my tour sold out my first tour headline tour sold out and that was another thing that people were like kind of wondering can somebody that's on ticot sell

tickets and it was really cool to see not only the internet translate into streaming but the internet translated into ticket sales i end up doing shows like lalapalooza there's this like big video of me at Lollapalooza and AOK starts and I don't even sing in the whole crowd. It's just, there's like 35,000 people at Lala Palooza and they all go like, living in this big blue one of sound. Never heard anything like it. This was one of your first live performances. That was my first live performance.

Yeah. Exactly. That was my first live performance with a full band and I had trumpets too and it was crazy. And how did you feel walking off the stage? Off the stage, I was mad because I sang so bad. I was for real. I was like, and not that I sang bad, it was just like, my throat was so hoarse and I was struggling with it for the three days lining up to it that I was just so stressed out.

And then it was over. There was like some relief that I didn't have to think about anymore. But also I was like, man, I could do better. And that's the thing that gets me going like that right there where I was like, okay, I'm glad it's bad because now I can practice for the next, you know, six months and be the best vocal performer live that I can be, you know, because I needed that. You had said earlier that you knew it was safe to experiment early on things people are going to forget or aren't that important to who you're going to be.

How do you feel about the tie of relating so closely to the platform of TikTok? And what do you hope to do with that? Nothing, man. It's going to be gone. I don't really know what's going to happen next, to be honest. I don't really know if TikTok has the same sort of explosive power, but I do know this, that you can go on TikTok right now and put a song on TikTok, of you playing it,

of you singing in your car, of you doing whatever you want to do to it, and the algorithm without you pressing any settings, you're just pressing the post button, will put you in front of an audience that you haven't been before, who have never seen you, who will give you their attention, because they're on the app. That's where the attention is. So if you want, if you're complaining about how much attention you're musing is getting, the attention is on TikTok. So you need to be

on that platform. I guess I need to get on TikTok. Switchdown Pop is produced by Nate Sloan and meet Charlie Harding. Edited by Jolie Myers, engineered by Brandon Marlin, social media by Happy Bar, illustration by Thomas Gottlie. Our executive producers are Ashok-Korwa, Connorosa, and a member of the Vox Media Podcast Network and a production of Vulture. You get more episodes of the podcast at Switchton. pop.com. We are at Switched on Pop on Instagram and Twitter. Maybe TikTok soon. And we'll be back again on Tuesday with an episode on why it is that new holiday songs never seem to make it into our Christmas radio rotation. Are they just not any good? Listen with us and find out on Tuesday. And until

then, thanks for listening.