Like many 40-year-olds who interact with social media solely when needed, MGMT co-founder Ben Goldwasser doesn’t have a TikTok account. So when the title monitor of the band’s 2018 album, Little Darkish Age, immediately started showing in 1000’s of movies on the platform within the first pandemic summer time of 2020, he needed to depend on his spouse and buddies to clue him in on the out-of-nowhere phenomenon.
“It was shocking to me to even have our track be on TikTok in any respect, after which it was like, ‘Effectively, how huge is that this?’” Goldwasser tells SPIN by telephone. “I don’t even know what an enormous TikTok track is or what which means.”
On this case, “huge” doesn’t actually do justice to what’s been occurring with “Little Darkish Age” on TikTok, the place customers have made greater than 5.5 million movies that weave the track into anime, superhero films, online game clips and post-George Floyd social justice-themed content material. Others have used “Little Darkish Age” in content material the place they remodel themselves into figures from classical work, specific solidarity with those that establish as trans and, most not too long ago, to soundtrack footage of Russian missile bombardment of Kyiv.
The mid-tempo, synth-driven “Little Darkish Age” doesn’t seem to truly be about any of these issues, and Goldwasser would solely say that the track (which was written throughout Donald Trump’s first yr as president) is “very a lot a touch upon issues that have been occurring on the planet at the moment and which have been nonetheless fairly current” when the TikTok development took off. The lyrics are open-ended sufficient to ask myriad interpretations, although references to “forgiving who you might be for what you stand to achieve” and “love’s seeping” from the weapons of the police have appeared significantly related throughout each the Trump administration and the COVID-19 pandemic, which was certainly a “darkish age” for folks all over the world.
“It jogs my memory of a world steadily deteriorating as everybody’s psychological well being dissolves — like a dystopian novel,” wrote one YouTube commenter. “This track makes me really feel just like the dangerous days are but to come back and It’s making me excited for them,” stated one other. The track “brilliantly manages to attach so deeply with each single member of its viewers, typically in drastically alternative ways case by case,” provided a 3rd. “No track has made me really feel so strongly.”
Goldwasser describes MGMT’s personal video for “Little Darkish Age” as “very a lot a love letter to goth music movies from the ‘80s, the place we simply referenced a bunch of issues that we like. It wasn’t essentially associated to any of the subject material of the track or something like that.” In that means, MGMT had already accomplished what the TikTok group would later do: use the track as a jumping-off level to riff on subjects each ephemeral and profound.
All this exercise has turbo-charged MGMT’s streaming numbers on DSPs, significantly on Spotify, the place “Little Darkish Age” now has 266 million listens, and YouTube, the place the official music video has ballooned to 68 million views. The track was garnering about 50,000 streams per day on Spotify earlier than issues heated up on TikTok, finally rising to a single-day excessive of 658,000 on October 29, 2021. Each day streams have remained within the 450,000 vary for weeks, making “Little Darkish Age” the band’s fourth-biggest track there, behind solely the 2000s-era indie-rock standard-bearers “Youngsters,” “Electrical Really feel” and “Time To Fake,” all drawn from its 2004 debut, Oracular Spectacular.
“What I feel is de facto cool about it personally is how a lot of it’s out of our arms,” Goldwasser says. “It’s fully unintentional. It’s not like we’ve management over how individuals are decoding this. Persons are simply taking it and working with it. For me as a musician, that’s actually thrilling. That’s extra artistic than making an attempt to determine what an artist has to say, or making an attempt to get on the deeper that means behind one thing. Loads of instances, there isn’t a deeper that means. The that means is what’s out on the planet.”
Large, mainstream pop hits dominated TikTok in 2021, with Megan Thee Stallion and Doja Cat reigning as the highest two most-viewed artists. However the platform’s potential to resurface seemingly left-field and catalog tracks from a variety of genres is simply as potent, a phenomenon chalked as much as its fabled algorithm. “These indie rock sounds are actually standard proper now,” says one major-label A&R government. “TikTok’s algorithm is beautiful at recognizing different songs with that very same sonic really feel and slowly however very deliberately amplifying them from degree to degree.”
Throughout the previous few weeks, Hollywood celebrities like The Rock and Drew Barrymore have propelled the Ting Tings’ 2008 one-hit-wonder “That’s Not My Title” again into the highlight by posting movies of their totally different roles in films all through the years. Philadelphia indie-folk act Dr. Canine loved a runaway TikTok revival final yr of its 2010 track “The place’d All of the Time Go,” whereas Chicago group the Walters, who had damaged up in 2017, received again collectively and signed an enormous take care of Warner Data as soon as its 2014 track “I Love You So” turned TikTok well-known in late 2021.
Artists on this place basically have three choices: do nothing and see what occurs, rent influencers to create extra posts that includes the identical music and hope the algorithm notices or shoot their very own associated content material and publish it from their very own account. Sources say MGMT took the primary method, preferring to let the development play out organically.
Goldwasser likens the “Little Darkish Age” expertise to how folks have not too long ago skilled The Beatles’ Get Again documentary, given the good thing about greater than 50 years of context for the recording periods captured therein. As such, the music turns into much more what the person listener makes of it, which has clearly been a think about driving the success of “Little Darkish Age.”
“I don’t know the way many individuals simply knew the clip from TikTok after which used it themselves, or heard small components of it with none context,” Goldwasser says. “It’s onerous to say whether or not they have been influenced by the track or whether or not they have been influenced by the very fact the track is already getting used for another objective. Generally you hear one thing with a sure sound and it brings all these different emotions and pictures to thoughts.”
Even when TikTok success interprets to an enormous increase in DSP streams, most of those songs, together with “Little Darkish Age,” have seen their second winds largely ignored by mainstream radio (for no matter it’s price, “Youngsters” by no means received greater than No. 91 on The Billboard Scorching 100 and no MGMT track has ever reached the highest 15 of Billboard’s Scorching Rock and Different songs chart). To some observers, this concurrently proves TikTok’s energy to interrupt songs in addition to how out of contact with tradition radio has grow to be.
“There are stations that received’t play these information as a result of they’re too previous, regardless that they’re getting 5 or 10 million streams every week,” the chief says. “As an alternative, it’s like, give me this different new track that has flatlined at 25,000 streams every week. That Walters track is on Right now’s Prime Hits, which is likely one of the largest Spotify playlists on the planet. Individuals aren’t used to the thought of working with music that’s pushed and originates from an app like TikTok. However children discover this to be simply as significant — that is their model of listening to the radio and listening to a track.”
Identified for taking its time between initiatives, MGMT hasn’t performed dwell since November 2019 and has no plans to launch new music within the close to future. However Goldwasser is already curious to see if new followers finally flip up that have been unfamiliar with the band earlier than “Little Darkish Age” exploded.
“Will probably be actually fascinating to see how the crowds may have modified each time we get again to taking part in dwell, and whether or not that will carry over to a few of the different tracks off the album too, which might be nice,” he says. “Individuals criticize the TikTok technology for having no sense of context or historical past, however when you spent 10 minutes there, it will fully show that false. Youngsters are extremely good and literate and are pulling collectively all these references. It’s fairly wonderful.”