11.24.2020

TikTok Treats, Week Of Nov. 23rd

Latin Trap, Old School Rap, Charlie Brown and More From the World Of TikTok

The News:

Nostalgia is rising on TikTok while old hits continue to inspire new trends, but that is not all. The TikTok community continues to be the springboard for rising stars that use the platform to promote new music while building their fanbases. This week, TikTok creators mined music from the past while emerging artists simultaneously continued to pave the way for their future musical careers.

A precious few songs are so enduring that they transcend their moment of creation and become standards, beloved anew by each generation that discovers it. One such song is “It’s Tricky,” the immortal rock-rap anthem by Run-DMC, which was a top trending song on TikTok this week. Generating over 1 million video creations, many of which in just two weeks, the song is the go-to backing track for TikTok’s “This Or That” trend, in which users give a little glimpse of their personalities by creatively making a series of binary decisions. The trend is perfect for couples, families, and parents who really hope their child brings home the right person.
Singer-songwriter Ricky Montgomery is an unlikely TikTok star, but his soft folk ballads have struck a nerve with the platform’s community. The Honeysticks frontman is currently trending with his 6/8 unrequited love ballad “Line Without A Hook” (114k creations) The TikTok community uses “Line Without A Hook” to celebrate the love of movie couples, celebrity couples, or even their parents. Most touchingly, it’s been adopted as an anthem by the trans community, who use the song to help connect what can seem like two different selves. Montgomery, who also had a minor TikTok hit earlier this year with his 2016 song “Mr. Loverman” (42k creations), returned the TikTok love by sharing an acoustic performance of the song.
Mexican producer-singer Leon Leiden has used TikTok to develop into one of his country’s most promising rising stars. The 22-year-old artist is incredibly active on the platform, posting several videos per week and often enlisting the TikTok community to help promote, and sometimes even contribute to his music. He built up a following with music commentary, detailing the history of samples in reggaeton and analyzing songs like Bad Bunny’s “Safaera.” During the first stages of quarantine, Leon started to let people into his creative process, detailing the creative process behind his song “Gitana” (26k video creations, 15 million Spotify streams), which he created by compiling contributions from talented TikTok users over his laid-back beat. Most recently, Leon has been indulging his obsession with Spongebob Squarepants, recording a new banger that samples the show’s bouncy, nautical credits music. The week-old sound already has 2.8k video creations.
Vince Guaraldi’s classic music for the Peanuts cartoon series has inspired joy and nostalgia for decades on end–and now it’s inspired a creative TikTok trend. In September, TikTok user @papa.squash posted a video soundtracked to Guaraldi’s “Linus & Lucy,” in which he showed the world how he would dance if he were a Peanuts character. His video caused a snowball effect over the next month, as users hopped on the Charlie Brown bandwagon with TikTok’s duet feature, adding their own unique dance styles to the Peanuts special in their heads.
One of the more surprising TikTok hits of the year is MGMT’s “Little Dark Age,” the title track from their 2018 album. With over 195k video creations across multiple sounds, the vibey song soundtracks a unique trend, in which TikTok users attempt to transform themselves into figures from classic paintings. The trend has splintered into several sub-themes, allowing people to express their inner god or goddess and providing an outlet for people who believe they have “ancient faces,” or “that 1800 B.C. look.”

Along with the TikTok platform itself, artists new and old are flourishing. The trends and tracks introduced or reintroduced above are just a few examples of the ways TikTok is the bellwether for popular music. The TikTok community will continue to support established artists and identify future stars.

Check TikTok’s newsroom for more noteworthy stories: newsroom.tiktok.com