Now, TikTok is our DJ. There is a lot of Meghan Trainor playing.
Now, TikTok is our DJ. There is a lot of Meghan Trainor playing.
The pop sensation, Meghan Trainor, is seated in an empty marble bathtub, surrounded by two of her friends. She is completely dressed. The trio starts off by flawlessly singing ‘Made You Look’, the popular song Ms Trainor released in the autumn, a cappella for roughly 30 seconds. Then they pause, turn to face one another, and scream with joy.
That video clip received a tonne of attention from TikTok users in November, surpassing 100 million views and garnering remarks like “I’m sure this is playing at the gates of heaven.” It is currently the most watched video on the platform by Ms. Trainor.
The performance appeared casual because it was recorded in a bathroom, but it showed how Ms Trainor has perfected using TikTok in recent years, reviving her music career and gaining mainstream popularity she hadn’t seen since she released ‘All About That Bass’ in 2014.
The doo-wop body positivity chorus “every inch of you is perfect from the bottom to the top” and its pastel-hued music video became an earworm for many people, and Nielsen reported that it sold 5.8 million downloads to become the highest-selling female artist’s digital song of the 2010s. In 2016, Ms. Trainor was awarded the Grammy for best new artist.
TikTok is now the catalyst for Spotify stream growth and has a significant impact on what songs make it to radio and the Billboard charts. Record labels are anxious to imitate and covet the currency of popularity.
Ms. Trainor currently has roughly 18 million followers on TikTok, largely because of the song “Made You Look,” which immediately after its debut in October sparked a popular dance challenge. Lil Nas X, one of the platform’s breakout stars, has 29 million followers, while Taylor Swift, who uses the app seldom, has 18.9 million.
Ms. Trainor frequently uploads her own music videos to TikTok, where she also performs dances to her own songs and duets with other, smaller musicians. She has developed a fun, oversharing persona as well, releasing videos about having sex with her husband, shaving her face before a live television performance, and taking adult laxatives.
ImageShe mentioned a well-liked video she made about anal fissures as evidence that TikTok rewarded her style of “T.M.I.” honesty on a recent afternoon in Manhattan, but the 29-year-old was also obviously smart in her use of the programme. Ms. Trainor had just returned from “The Kelly Clarkson Show” where she had a gender reveal (another boy!) after teasing the news for weeks on TikTok.
She was seven months pregnant at the time and wearing fuzzy slippers in her agency’s office. Chris Olsen, a jovial 25-year-old content creator with his own sizeable following who has been working with the singer and songwriter as a consultant since 2022 and frequently features in her videos, joined her on a couch. Chris is her close buddy and TikTok sherpa.Many musicians go there and say things like, “I’m getting yelled at because I don’t have enough TikToks,” but Ms. Trainor claimed she had never ever spoken to her label. “I believe that’s why I like it so much and don’t consider it a job,” the speaker said.
Since the pandemic, TikTok has undeniably shaped American society, inspiring successes in music, television, and film, despite calls from lawmakers to outlaw the app due to worries about its Chinese owner ByteDance.
According to the Pew Research Centre, it is used by two-thirds of 13 to 17-year-olds in the United States, and TikTok claims to have 150 million users worldwide. With its large user base, the ability for users to make dance videos and other music-related videos, and its mysterious algorithm, TikTok has significantly influenced the music industry. Its algorithm can take obscure songs or singles carefully planted by record labels and send them to Spotify and radio dominance.
However, not all musicians can or are ready to embrace TikTok in the same way that Ms. Trainor has.
