Switched on Pop - Who's Afraid of the Sound of TikTok? (w Cat Zhang)

Episode Date: December 17, 2019

Bass distorted to the edge of audibility; voices croaking out dark and violent lyrics; a hacked-together DIY aesthetic. This isn't a fringe musical movement, this is the sound of TikTok, the video app used by millions in Generation Z. And soon enough it might also be the sound of pop as we know it. Cat Zhang from Pitchfork stops by to clue us into the sonic reality of music's newest platform, from Gordon Ramsay to pumpkins screaming in the dead of night. Songs Discussed Savage Ga$p, 93FEETOFSMOKE - Pumpkins scream in the dead of night haroinfather, Savage Ga$sp - Tunnel of Love Arizona Zervas - ROXANNE HL Wave, Jhonny Flames - Gordon Ramsay Hooligan Chase - Asshole Comethazine - Walk Peter Kuli, Jed Will - ok boomer Young Spool, Jakob - WTF Check out Cat's article The Anatomy of a TikTok Hit on Pitchfork Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's free for iOS users. If you've been digging Switched on Pop for a while, or even if you're just brand new to it, we have a very exciting announcement. Our book Switched on Pop, how popular music works and why it matters is now out. Woo! Yeah, go check it out.

It has 16 breakdowns of songs from the past 20 years, from Andre 3000 to Z. Each one explains that song. It gives you a concept that you can apply to listening to the musical world around you. Yeah, it's ridiculously fun. It's the essential musical knowledge you got to know, and it's the best pop music.

Check it out. Switchedonpop.com slash book. Welcome to Switch on Pop. I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. And I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. And Charlie, you are a new dad. Yeah. So you've entered into this world of fatherhood.

Yeah. And there's a lot in store, right? So we're going to start preparing you for this journey by listening to the prehist. preferred music of the youth right now. Yeah. Get ready because this is coming down the line. Not yet, Theo, I'm sure Theo's just rocking out to like Rafi and Paul Simon or whatever,

but soon Theo is going to grow up. Yeah. And this is what he's going to be listening to. So we've got to wrap our heads around it, okay? Sure. Today we dive into the music of TikTok, and we welcome our shamanic guide on this vision quest, Kat Zang, executive editorial assistant at Pitchfork, an author of the piece,

Anatomy of a TikTok hit. Cat, thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for having me. Now, before we dive in to the musical world of TikTok, Charlie, I have a special dad booth for you, okay? Okay. So if things ever get overwhelming,

we're going to hear a lot of strange sounds, you can just step inside the dad booth, and this is what you'll hear. Okay, so just take some deep breaths, Some comforting beach boys. Listen to the beach boys. And I thought we could even have a safe word maybe. Okay.

Rickenbocker. Sure. Rickenbocker. 12-string guitar. Okay. Kat, let's start with the obvious. What is TikTok? TikTok is a short form video app run by the Chinese company by dance.

And on the platform, people will post like lip-sinking videos or dance challenges or, you know, short-form comedic skits. and it's often compared to Vine, which is another short-form video platform. Right, right. That's what my college students say. TikTok is like what Vine was, R-I-P Vine. Okay, what role does music play on TikTok? So music is pretty much the soundtrack to any video that happens on TikTok. In terms of dance challenges, if you think about the last, I don't know, decade of dance challenges from the Dougie, the Whip Nene, Tricks in My Feelings,

all of those challenges were anchored around a single song, and the more that people hopped onto the challenge, the more that that song went viral. Takeda kind of provides a very condensed or compressed way for that virality to happen. In terms of comedy, I think users will often latch onto a phrase in a specific song and then use that as a way to communicate something about themselves. So for example, the rapper Sweetie has this song called My Type.

While the song builds up, people will list attributes of their type, like tall, athletic, blonde, whatever. And then once sweetie says, that's my type, that's my type, then they'll like enthusiastically chant along. So that's what they do when they latch on to the phrases. I mean, other songs like Justin Bieber's iny-meany, there's the phrase, let me see what you're missing. Usually like these specific types of videos are about either communicating like, hey, I'm attractive or hey, this is what it's attractive to me. So artists like Suiti and Justin Bieber are already pretty well established.

And it makes sense that people would want to play their music on TikTok in these videos. But what we want to really dive into here is the world of something. songs that are like made particularly for or really grow within the ecosystem of TikTok. Not maybe establish artists in the same way, but artists who are using TikTok to promote their careers. And we have a pretty good example of why this matters in the form of the longest running top number one Billboard hit ever Old Town Road by Little Nas X, which gained popularity via these TikTok videos. Charlie, you doing okay?

No, yeah. I'm comfortable. Yeah, you're down. I'm kind of like, I'm caught up here. Yeah, you're down with Lil Nas X. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so it seems like TikTok is going to be increasingly important in terms of seeing what new artists are coming up the pike. So let's start to get acquainted with the sound of TikTok.

Kat, I'd love if you could tell us what a typical TikTok song might sound like. Yeah, so one thing that I've noticed a lot is that a lot of the songs are kind of trap, pop, that kind of stuff. the beats are really distorted, blown out. It sounds really grainy and crackly kind of like it's coming out from the iPhone speaker. So I've heard like really degraded versions of Megan the Stallion's cash shit, and I think that's kind of what's happening there. I think on a very practical level, one reason this could be the case is because when teenagers are like uploading this audio,

they might literally be like pressing play on their laptop and then recording it into their iPhone. When I've spoken to the artists, they say that this is a really intentional choice. So one influence is like sound cloud rappers do the same thing. Their beats are very noisy. It's intentionally DIY, unmixed, unpolished, that kind of stuff. Specific to the TikTok contacts, I think it's important to artists or people who are listening that the beats and the music itself sound kind of like you're recording it in your bedroom, in your parents' house.

Because if it's too professional, it's a little alienating. You want the music to sound almost like you could have made it, but you didn't. One of the TikTok users that I was talking to who takes the sounds and then makes her own videos, she was making comparison to making videos with a professional camera. you would never use a professional camera for TikTok videos because that would kind of ruin the fun and the idea that you're just filming it in your home. So I think it's a similar thing with the beats there.

So there's this blown out distorted sound and there's this kind of DIY aesthetic. Let's go a little bit deeper into each of these musical qualities that make up a larger sonic TikTok constellation. For the blown out effect, Let's listen to a track by an artist named, okay, here we go. Kometazine, C-O-M-E-T-H-A-Z-I-N-E for those keeping score at home. And the track is called Walk.

Hey, I walk around like that nigger. Finger on the trigger. If a nigga wants to smoke, I let this chopper eat it level. He is actually a popular rapper, and the version that they use on TikTok, they, like, intentionally distorted it. So the version that's playing now doesn't have the weird bass thud. That's just the normal Spotify version that hasn't been altered. Oh, interesting. Okay.

I wonder if those really low bass thud sounds in the original recording don't translate well on a phone speaker. And so it actually sounds better if you're listening on the platform that, yeah, you want a more high-end version of the track. High-end meaning more high frequencies, less low frequencies. Yeah, I think that makes sense. I think with the lofi sound, it's so crackly that it feels kind of like a reverberation. When these thuds happen, people will often pair it with like a jettering visual. I think it's like the earthquake filter. And with something more polished, maybe it doesn't sound quite like what that sort of earthquake feels.

Like when something is like noisier and like more fried, that feels energy. energetic and raucous as opposed to refined and polished. So TikTok users will take the song and intentionally make it sound crappier, essentially, at least from one perspective. Yeah. Though I guess exactly what we're trying to establish in this conversation is how maybe to listen differently to sounds that we might immediately apprehend a sounding crappy. So, okay, let me walk that back even as I say it. Yeah.

And if you go onto YouTube and you search up some of these TikTok songs, you can see versions that are like bass boosted, an infinite number of remixes that kind of tailor it to what the listener wants to hear. Interesting. Okay, so what we're already learning is that there's TikTok versions of these songs that circulate that are even more distorted and kind of lo-fi than what I just played off of Spotify. Let's turn our ears to another kind of blown-out track. This one is by Young Spool, Y-U-N-G-S-P-O-O-L. And it is simply titled W-T-F. All right, what the fuck, yeah.

Like, what the-fuck? Yeah, what-the-fuck. Pussy gets you stuck. Playing fluts you with your life, your chicken. I'm going to hear you cluck. Quack. Duh. Out of it.

Um, mom, I'm going to be okay. Safe word. Rick and Bacher? No, I'm going to make it through this one. Okay. I mean, maybe this is a testament to also, like, the way you listen in TikTok, which is often passively the stuff is in the background. So while sometimes a song resonates with you so much that you search it up on Spotify or whatever,

I think there are a lot of songs that also become really popular, and yet you have no idea who these people are. Yeah, so we don't know a lot about Young Spool, and that's not a problem. It's not an artist-focused medium. The artist sort of recedes into the background. This song is a great example of distortion, and I can maybe pinpoint one moment, especially right in the beginning, It's the end of that W-T-F phrase, the final word in that triumvirate.

When Young Spool utters it, it is so distorted and blown out. It's really intense to listen to. Let's spin that back. What the fuck? Yeah. Like, if you were in a recording studio, I think, with a major artist, you would be like, oh, no, that's, we got to redo that. Like, you clipped, it's too distorted.

Like, the gain is too high. we have to do that again. Yeah. But that's not the point. The point here is to achieve that sound. The thing that stuck up for me here, Nate, is the sort of kitchen sink sound. Mm-hmm. It really sounds like they went into the kitchen, pulled out some pots and pans, and made a...

Yeah. It's pretty hot. I'm really into that funky pots and pans groove, yeah. I also imagine... Boom, boc-p-p-p-p-and-riser thing. I imagine that's got to be conducive to really fun visual antics that are translated into TikTok. Yeah, will you illustrate them for me in the studio right now? I don't know.

Charlie just ripped off his shirt. He's smearing mayonnaise all over his chest. It's disgusting and I love it. I'm a TikTok star. Let's do a little more on this track because there's one more kind of blown out aspect, which is the bass. There's a very common sample library, a tool that a lot of producers will use to make sounds on their computer called 808 Warfare. And that reminds me of the 808 Warfare Library. Yeah.

This is, yeah, it's, it's warfare seems appropriate. It's very violent and intense. Kat, why do you think TikTok users are drawn to these kind of blown out and distorted tones? I think because it sounds really noisy and energetic, or at least that's the answer that I was getting from a lot of the artists who are using them. Like if you are a producer in your bedroom with a small arsenal of tools, the most impactful thing that you can do to your beat or whatever. is just like, you know, do the 808 warfare and like make it automatically seem explosive. And then as well as this idea of like a buildup, like this EDM buildup, you can feel the anticipation starting to build in a song like WTF. And then when he says, what the fuck and there's that beat,

there's an immediate release. So already I can envision what kind of visuals are going to be there. Going back to what you were saying earlier about the clanking sounds, I think that's, is a common feature of TikTok songs as well that I'm sort of flushing out but haven't really thought about that much. It definitely shows up in a song like Pumpkin Scream in the Dead of the Night, which is a song I talk about in my TikTok article. One thing that I talk about in the piece is the Woe Dance, which is like one of, I think, the most popular dance on TikTok. It's really hard to describe. I think the original version is kind of like you ball your fists and you move your hands in like opposite clockwise motions and then at some point

there's like a freeze on the beat. To me now it looks just more like a punch in some way, but you would woe basically when that like release hits. And then when people would like layer the earthquake visual over their woe and then combine that with the beat. So the effect altogether feels like really crazy, almost like you're in a car, you play the music, and then like, wow, your car is vibrating and shaking. That's what the music feels like. So all these things together, the earthquake effect, the dance moves, the blown out distorted tones, kind of make your phone turn into like a movie theater or something. It becomes like almost a cinematic experience, perhaps. Yeah, I've never thought about that, but I think that's a great

way to think about it. Let's listen to some more distorted TikTok jams. This one has become somewhat iconic. It's by Jedwill and Peter Cooney, and it's called OK Boomer. Old ladies suck. Wow. Rickenbocker? No, I think this is fascinating. I'm totally drawn in. Okay Boomer is now, I think like a catchphrase on the internet. Oh, I think it's post catchphrase. Oh, we've, I think we're late to it. Yeah, the meme is dead. Yeah, the meme is dead.

Wow, all right. The song illustrates, too, these musical qualities. Every time he says, OK, Boomer, and he says it a lot, it's so distorted and noisy. And again, we have this 808 warfare style bass that's just like at the edge of pure tone and going always into, like, cresting into distortion. This song seems designed to antagonize the people it's describing, the greatest generation. Yeah. Like even how you describe, Nate, like you could, I could see an iPhone sitting on the dash of a car and then as soon as it's playing,

the whole iPhone is rumbling and shaking and everything. Yeah, very cinematic. Yeah, or you can even imagine this song blaring out of a house party as the very irritated neighbor has to like listen to it. That's what I'm thinking of. Also, the. grainyness has like an ironic effect. Like if you think about memes that are really grainy and look ugly and have comic sands, that's kind of what this song is in music form. Oh, interesting. Like intentionally ugly for an ironic purpose.

It's like oral pixelation or something. Yeah. Now, something you mentioned earlier, Kat, was also that there's maybe like an intentionally kind of DIY feel to these songs. Can you tell us a little more about that? Yeah, like I was saying earlier, I think that it sounds like you created it on the cheap with like a microphone that you bought off Amazon. And because it seems so emulatable, it's also really relatable. And something that I was thinking about is how this also mirrors trends in like bedroom pop, specifically in the style of artists like Claro, who used to create this really saccharine nostalgic pop R&B stuff with these bright, dinky sense.

And since this article came out, I think there's a certain type of music on TikTok that's become popular. They didn't get to talk about, which has this sort of bedroom pop flavor. One song that is on the top of the U.S. Viral 50 right now is Yellow Hearts by Aunt Saunders, and it has that sort of sugary feel. It's all about not knowing your relationship status with the girl because she put your name in yellow hearts. I think a lot of bedroom pop is about that kind of. romantic ambiguity. But a song that I'm really interested in right now is Roxanne by Arizona Zervas, which I think combines that sort of bedroom pop sound with some of the more like rap stuff that I was talking about in my piece.

So if you notice at the beginning, it's sort of, starts out with this, like, almost vinyl crackle, as he says, all for the gram. All for the gram. So already you're put back into this, like, nostalgic place. You're talking about Instagram. Maybe you're thinking about, like, a faded filter of you and a sunset, you know, reflecting back on some, like, prior moment. The crackle, obviously, is, like, referencing that sort of, like, intentionally low

sound. And then if you listen to the synths, they're chill and bright, and they do seem kind of like pastel bedroom poppy. And then when he starts singing, it's like this post-Malone style, like melodic sing-rap. So it's a fusion of two styles that I think works really well. And then thematically, it's all about this girl, Roxanne, who's kind of elusive. And so to me, what I'm thinking about is the girl in Hotline Bling when Drake says, like, you've been going out more and wearing less. And women on Twitter were like, good for her. So this is like her moment now in this song, Roxanne. And I think when people listen to Roxanne or especially women, they get to feel like cool and like desirable. But later in the song, he says like, she thinks I'm a flirt. You know, she thinks I'm a player.

like the guy also gets to feel desirable to. I said earlier that TikTok is all about like establishing that you're attractive or establishing what you find attractive and I think this fits within that theme really well. You know what else that's teaching me, Nate? Yeah. I think boomers should love this music because you know what? You know who loves old synthesizers and vinyl? Yeah.

Boomers. It's true. You know, they just got to tune into those sounds. It's true. Maybe even like a police reference here. Yeah. Who's more boomer than sting? I mean, you know.

I love your. analysis, Kat. And it's like, to quote another TikTok artist from your piece, Hooligan Chase. I mean, can we just, I just wanted a list of all the names of these TikTok artists. It's amazing. Hooligan, if I can be so bold as to call him by his first name, says the masses can relate to it because they feel like they can do it too, almost,

which is interesting. That's not maybe the approach of a lot of mainstream pop where it's like, you can't do this. You can't sing like this. You don't have access to these tools in this production. TikTok maybe is different. It's like, yeah, you could do this too. I just happened to do it. Let's spin Hooligan Chase's asshole.

I ain't got no drugs I'm turning to an asshole. Dad, you weren't into that. I don't know. The track didn't take me. I'm not in like Wickenbacker zone. I don't know. You don't need a little bit of this? It's so nice.

Soothing. No. The harmony is, Charlie. I do love good. I love a good harmony. I just, I don't know. The beat didn't take me for that one. Okay.

Huligan Chase feels like something you could do yourself. It's not particularly virtuosic. Maybe that's why I tuned out a little bit. So we've discussed the blown out distortion. We've discussed the DIY aesthetic. Let's talk about two more sort of sonic aspects of these TikTok tracks. One is something that you mentioned. earlier, Kat. A lot of these

are connected to viral dance crazes, particularly ones that have what you call a moment of transformation. What are we talking about there? What is the transformation in a TikTok video? So transformation videos are the style of

video where a TikTok user will appear on screen in maybe like one outfit or, you know, with a bare face of makeup and then something switches in the song they might cover the camera with their hand, and then when they lift the camera,

they're in a different outfit or in a full face of makeup, so they are transforming on camera. This type of video depends on music that has a precise point at which to transition like a drop or a shift in the sample. To get a taste of these transformation tracks,

let's listen to a popular one called Tunnel of Love by Hero and Father. So, baby, caress me. I've been doing all this shit, just hoping that you impress me when I level a lot. Girl, I buy you diamonds and jet skis and your girlfriend. That might be the one that I'm testing you, my angel. Girl, I think you come from above. My diamonds glisten, shining in a tunnel of love.

And now we kissing. Girl, I think your tongue is so fun. Play Mad de Marco. Now we chilling under the sun. So with this track, what happens when the beat drops? At this point, the person might either lift their hand from the screen or they, might like jump midair and then like their outfits would suddenly change because they edit it in that way. So with the convergence of the transformation and that kind of beat drop, it makes it particularly impactful or satisfying to watch.

It works too because he talks about leveling up and the core sample here is based off of a Zelda fairy theme song. So there's a whole video game sort of interior and also nostalgic reference going on. Definitely. You also mentioned the woe earlier and I love your. description of watching great woe videos. You say witnessing woes that are perfectly timed to these drops can be as satisfying

as watching an Olympic gymnastic a difficult landing. Let's listen to Gordon Ramsey, the OG Wo video. If she can't clap without her hands, what did you say? If she can't clap without her hands and I don't want that bitch.

I feel like Gordon Ramsey how I flip my fucking wrist. No, I'm working balker. But no, not yet. You're getting there. I can see your steely resolve starting to crack, Charlie. I notice that a lot of these songs also start with this kind of off-mic banter that almost sound, part of that DIY aesthetic you were discussing, Kat. You just walked into the studio.

It just happened by accident. Oh, leave it in, you know, leave it in. Okay, let's take five and prepare ourselves for more TikTok listening. When we come back, I want to explore one more musical characteristic of these TikTok songs, The Croke. And then we can think about how this might be affecting the sound of pop overall. Attention Spotify. Has yeted a new Good Girl Jasmine Absolute of Carolina Herrera. A fragrance intense with character gourmet and addicive.

Imagine a jasmine emvolventy, caramelized, and tonka-tostata. A combination that seduce from the first instant and she has a weya. Good Girl Jasmine Absolute, hypnotica, irresistible. Discover it now and let you emvolver for its essence. We are back with Katzang breaking down the sound of TikTok. I think there's one other important criteria we need to discuss, and that is the croak. The vocal timbre of so much of these TikTok songs has this, what you call a croaky delivery. Let's listen to an artist that has come up a few times.

Do you mean like we're going to rap like this? No, not Kermit croaking, Charlie. Savage Gasp with a dollar sign. We heard him on Tunnel of Love. Let's listen to their track Pumpkins screaming in the Dead of Night Pumpkins screaming in the dead of night Okay, I can do it too

Maybe I'm ready to do you dead Pumpkins Um Cat, no, that's Glow oxal fur Oh no hurt No It's like heavy metal

It's like new metal But through the lens of trap I hear the croak Um Cat what do we What do we make of the croak? What is the meaning within the TikTok ecosystem

of this croaking vocal effect. I guess it's hard to tell. For him, it was just really random. Like, it was Halloween. He wanted to be a little bit spooky. He said that the way that he achieved the croak was that he drank some really hot coffee and then he hit the jewel. I mean, like PSA, like not a good idea.

You want to hit the jewel and then drink coffee? No, no jewels. No jewels. 100% anti-juel. Right, right, right, right. Not even just as a dad, just as a person. We just smoke blunts here. Moving on.

Yeah, Kat, go ahead. At a base level, the croak just makes the song really distinctive. When making a song for TikTok, you always want to have something a little bit weird about it to latch on to, whether it's that sort of kitchen sink sound or a croak or a shriek, something along those lines. I noticed a couple of different songs had a croak like this, maybe not as exaggerated, but still kind of this low, rough voice. And I noticed that these songs were really picked up by E-Boys. which is like a special type of figure on TikTok.

They're kind of like goths a little bit. But in this case, like the e-boys are like the cool kids. They're kind of hot. E-boys like really love pumpkin screen. They really love asshole. I think part of it is just like the lyrics are kind of like cool, a little dismissive. And then the croak definitely signifies some sort of like masculinity for them, kind of like this big like fuckboy energy. Yeah.

Okay, wow. Brickenbacher. Okay, so we have now covered the blown out distortion, the DIY aesthetic, the connection to dance moves and viral transformation videos, the signature croak of so many of these songs. And it all sounds very sort of niche and maybe fringe in a certain way. But what's fascinating is that just like Old Town Road, a lot of these artists are starting to get some more mainstream recognition. You mentioned that Stunner Girl, responsible for the track runway, has signed with Capital. Swayko, the child, behind Fast,

has signed with Atlantic Records. So it makes sense for us to face our fears, pull on, and get acquainted with this music because I think we're going to, maybe as we listen to the top 40, we'll start to hear this croaking distortion and DIY kind of feel. I feel like the only aspect of this phenomenon that we are really due to discuss is something you discuss in your article, the racial and gender politics of these TikTok tracks. On one hand, as you point out, it's not really about the artist. It's not foregrounded. It's the user who you see, but it would be nevertheless, I think, wrong not to acknowledge that in a lot of cases here, you have white artists really appropriating a certain kind of

SoundCloud aesthetic and you might have users of different races creating videos based on these tracks. I mean, how would we begin to unpack the kind of messy world of TikTok music? Yeah, it is like a minefield of like really tricky racial dynamics. That's the first thing that I noticed when I logged onto the app. I mean, a lot of internet humor and slang is a already borrowed from black culture and then all of the dance moves that they're doing are pretty much also derived from like black culture, black people. But on my feed, most of the dancers are

white. So that's already a complicated dynamic. And then because when you're lip syncing, you are like severing the original person from their voice, you can have like a white suburban been teenager taking the voice of like black rapper in this sort of like Ursula aerial dynamic. There's just like something really troubling about that performance of like using those tropes to play like a larger than life figure, to be sassy to like, you know, do whatever, but also be able to kind of like sever yourself from like the burden of those stereotypes. And I think that's something that like TikTok really enables because. you can detach the voice from the actual person.

Yeah, while the sound might be new, the digging black culture for the performance of authenticity and the idea of the authentic coming from a particular group and the constant American appropriation of that culture feels entirely unnew. I do really like how you framed this conversation around, I'm getting old, I'm not paying attention to what's going on. I need to be caught up with youth culture and also the false conceit of I'm going to be made uncomfortable and need to have my safe space to go back into my wash of Beach Boys harmonies.

I know you want to play that again, but I'm going to stop you. Okay, fair enough. But, you know, I think at every point where I was feeling uncomfortable in the conversation, it's not to do with, like, new sounds. New sounds don't scare me. I'm curious about new sounds. Even, like, absurd profanity doesn't really bother me. I think the things that really concern me are the sort of larger conversations around TikTok's issues with international human rights, democracy. and free speech and the sort of difficult navigation between its Chinese ownership and its potential

censorship of material. That definitely is something concerns me. I think the speed of cultural appropriation that it allows, and I think that sort of the dominance of black music and the size of the audience being predominantly not black, it was definitely something that I was noting throughout and I was feeling like, hmm, that was making me uncomfortable. And then also even what, you know, Kat was saying, like the dominant language, and this is a visual platform, is like the aesthetic is about how do I look good? I think there's both sides of this where it's like, thank goodness, like people are feeling a place where they can claim a space.

I think that's very important. And I hope for young people who are on the platform that they feel comfortable claiming whatever space they want to claim and that they don't have to conform to a particular sound or a certain way of looking good in that performance. I definitely need to go spend more time on TikTok. That's for sure. Like, it's important. It's affecting culture.

But I think there's some really sticky issues that I still have to grapple with. This has been so illuminating, Kat. Thank you so much for joining us. We will put a link to your piece, The Anatomy of a TikTok hit in our show notes, y'all go and check it out. Switched on Pop is produced by Nate Sloan and Charlie Harding,

our amazing engineer and editor is Brandon McFarland. Megan Lubin and Bridget Armstrong are producers, and Nashat Kurwa and Liz Kelly Nelson are executive producers. We're a production of Vox Media. You can check more episodes of Switched on Pop. at www.w.w.switchdownpop.com. We're a production of Vox Media. You can check more episodes anywhere you get your podcast and switchedonpop.com. You can catch us on social at Switched on Pop. We love taking your musical recommendations and having conversation there.

We'll be back again in another week. And until then, thanks for listening.