As TikTok emerges as a global stage for the music industry, each song and upcoming artist holds the potential to rise into the next cultural phenomenon. Singers prioritize catchy hooks — saturated with trending phrases and overused passionless poetry — in an attempt to relate to younger audiences and grab short attention spans. Musicians assume that appeasing trends satisfies listeners; however, audiences crave vulnerable and poetic lyrics. Just like the countless, forgotten trendy items TikTok cycles through, music became soullessly mass-produced, with no regard to quality or artistic depth. Artists discover a marketing strategy that works for one individual and run the idea into the ground.
Consumerism in music traces back to TikTok poetry, notorious for its oversimplified metaphors. In 2024, poems comparing vulnerability to eating pomegranates — deemed messy, but worth it — dominated for you pages across the nation. Cannibalism also became a popular metaphor for soulmates, fueled by the resurgence of the indie movie “Bones and All.” Young teenagers resonated with these easily digestible verses, endlessly reposting them and mistaking relatability for quality, creating a cycle where users would post their own unoriginal renditions. The verses fixated on insecurities and relationships, frequently overusing the word yearning. These self-proclaimed poets also shared reflective lyrics from singer-songwriters like Taylor Swift and Lizzy McAlpine. Up-and-coming artists, noticing this phenomenon, attempted to fuse viral prompts with artistic depth, producing laughably atrocious songs where lyrics and melodies lack chemistry.
“TikTok has broken the chain of how people consume musical content. Before TikTok came around, music was created and digested by good vibes and truth to the sound. But now, music is created based on what the algorithm will easily consume, essentially making ‘easy, comfort music’ to appease the audience and give them short dopamine hits. These dopamine hits last just long enough to get enough of an idea of what the audience can and cannot handle. Usually, this translates into types of lyricism that the audience can and cannot digest. However, this can also translate into sound, such as how the current audience can handle odd chromatic scales within songs, but can’t handle loud, sharp sounds that happen every other bar,” magnet sophomore Eisan King said.
Artists cannot hold all the blame since labels prioritize music as a commodity, not human expression. As acquiring a label to sign proves no easy task, TikTok offers independent artists and wannabe Jeff Buckley poets the opportunity to publicly voice their work. Platforms such as TikTok and Instagram enable aspiring musicians to market their work to a broad audience without the help of greedy agencies, hence building their fanbase. Successful singers, such as Shawn Mendes and Tate McRae, first started their careers on YouTube by posting song covers. Social media allows fans to connect and peer into the personal lives of celebrities, but may potentially form parasocial relationships and predatory fan-artist dynamics.
Celebrities who built their careers on social media gained fame through consistency, not mediocrity. TikTok rewards trends, not true talent that sustains success beyond several weeks. Most audios only peak for several weeks or months before falling into the background as quickly as they rise. Trend charts grant short-term visibility, but may stunt long-term success, producing numerous one-hit wonders who later flop. If artists continue to overly rely on platforms like TikTok, the result will only be self-inflicted stagnation and fleeting fanbases. Similar media that enable accessible marketing should instead be used to enable artistic freedom. Instead of falling into the cycle of repeating trends, artists should use social media to fuel creative freedoms. By analyzing audience reception to their own discographies, musicians draw inspiration to branch out.
“They [artists] basically just take all these ideas that they’re seeing on TikTok, [what] all these teenagers are talking about, and just draw from that. They make music on it, but it’s not even music. For example, Sombr hears all teenagers talking about their relationship issues and transforms them into music. It [the lyrics] does not even sound like it’s truly deep and personal to him. It’s drawing from so many different artists, while not offering any new actual content on its own. It’s kind of just creating this landscape of music that is so blended. It’s just not different, and there’s no originality from new creators,” magnet sophomore Jay Singh said.
TikTok’s effect on music highlights how corporations value virality over vulnerability. Social media offers overnight fame to artists who implement catchy, buzzword hooks instead of lyrics that pull at heartstrings. Algorithms favor songs with a broad appeal, easy-to-understand metaphors and vague lyrics that most listeners can understand and relate to. Individuality and emotional substance disappear beneath industry-plant singers. Trend cycles only result in artistic stagnation, with each song sounding steadily similar. The legacy of this generation’s music will belong
to creators that push boundaries, not forgettable algorithm-friendly formulas.
