In Which I Try To Understand TikTok

Ok, I’ll admit it: this isn’t a particularly timely article. After all, we live in a post-”Old Town Road” world. By now the power of TikTok’s music marketing potential is obvious to all of us. But up until recently, like many stubborn 20-something year olds, I just wasn’t buying it. Well I guess no one is “buying it” since TikTok is free to download. But you know what I mean. To me, the whole thing seemed a little juvenile. Sure, I liked “Old Town Road” and “Truth Hurts” and a few of the other songs that were boosted by the app, but it seemed like the non-musical aspect of TikTok’s content was aimed at teenagers. But, on the OTHER hand, I’m only 23. I feel like it’s too early for me to be complaining about these kids and their crazy shenanigans. Not to mention how much I obviously care about keeping up with trends in music.

So, after much persuading by some of my younger-at-heart friends, I finally downloaded the app last December. Since then I think I’ve opened it maybe three times? Alas, it seems I’m still out of touch. And since I’m not willing to stop using words like “alas,” my best bet for reconnecting with the zeitgeist was by bringing in my friend Kate B., one of those young-at-heart people I mentioned before. Kate just so happens to be the graphic designer behind a certain up-and-coming music blog, so believe me when I say she knows what’s hip. Read her thoughts on TikTok below.

Note: this interview has been edited for clarity, and I’ve added some color commentary here and there (which will be italicized).

LB: Tell me a little bit about yourself. How old are you? What do you do?

KB: I am Kate, NOT Kathryn, Kate, 23 years old. I call myself a graphic designer, currently I’m working in marketing for a commercial real estate firm. That doesn’t lend itself to much creativity so on the side, trying to fill that more. And yeah. I live in Atlanta.

LB: So. You’re registered to vote, you pay income taxes, you make dance videos on a lip syncing app. Are all of these statements correct?

KB: Yes.

(If you can’t tell, professionalism isn’t really my strong suit.)

LB: How long have you had TikTok, and what was the quarter-life crisis that inspired you to download it?

(See?)

KB: So I think I downloaded it in the fall. I downloaded it because I’d seen some of the videos on Twitter (popular videos get shared there). Also my sister is like… I would say I teeter between Millenial and Gen Z, and my sister definitely falls in Gen Z, so a lot of the Gen Z stuff is influenced by her and whatnot. And also it was Musical.ly before it was TikTok. And Triller was in there too. So she’s been making lip syncing/silly dance videos since when it used to be that, and then TikTok bought them. So she’s been doing it. So I knew about it. But I downloaded it mostly for like the “Vine” content. Like funny, short clips. But then the dancing and lip syncing is obviously a big part of TikTok and now I think that’s fun too.

LB: When was the first time you remember hearing about TikTok, and do you remember how/from who you heard about it?

KB: I don’t know when. I remember last Christmas, Christmas of 2018, my sister made a Triller of our family. So that was pre-TikTok. I don’t know if TikTok existed yet and they just hadn’t bought them, or if it was still its own thing, but I don’t know. Christmas of 2018 would’ve been the earliest.

LB: Who do you know that uses TikTok (both personally, and what is your impression of the general user base?)

KB: The average user I definitely think is like SOLID Gen Z kid. Person.

LB: Toss out an age.

KB: High school age. Sixteen to eighteen. I definitely know it goes younger, and I definitely know it goes older, but that’s what I think of. My sister uses it. I think the only person I know that MAKES videos is my sister. Do any of my friends have it and watch it? Not that I know of. You! But you don’t really…

LB: Strike that from the record.

KB: ...No. I think we had this conversation in my cousin group chat… and I think one of my cousins downloaded it.

LB: How old is she?

KB: 24. (She’s a teacher). She was like “I need to download it! All my kids at school talk about it.”

LB: Next question: are these questions making me seem out of touch?

KB: Well, no.. I mean yes, but like… it’s not like… I definitely know that it’s a younger generation thing. (Good save there.) Younger than me.

LB: How much time do you spend on TikTok a day/week roughly?

We ended up checking this later, and Kate spends about ten minutes a day on the app. But she doesn’t check it every day. To quote her, “It’s definitely my last-checked social media.”

LB: What kind of content do you watch on TikTok? What kind of content do you make?

KB: So it works… When you open the app, you get the For You Page. I’m sure there’s an algorithm of things that you’ve liked or viewed or whatever and things that are going viral. Also I saw on Twitter that it picks up on your location, so like things around you.

LB: So it’s a mix of general viral stuff, a mix of location based stuff, and a mix of curated stuff.

KB: And I just go through that. And then I’ll go to a person’s page. What was the question? (Clearly I’m a captivating interviewer). So I watch the content that’s on the For You page. The big dance people come up - Charli DiMaggio?

(It’s actually D’Amelio. I think Kate was confusing this teenage social media celebrity with a long-dead baseball player).

She’s 15 and has like billions of followers. It’s insane. Most of it is funny content with the dances sprinkled in. The couple that I’ve made have been the dancing videos.

At this point in the interview, Kate decided to take an impromptu break to watch TikToks. Not to fact-check any of the random numbers she’s been throwing out, not because she wanted to show me something, but because I guess I was boring her. Eventually, we got back on track.

LB: Do you pay attention to the music you hear on TikTok? Is it familiar to you, or is it music you haven’t heard elsewhere?

KB: Yes, I do pay attention to the music I hear on TikTok. Obviously, they do some songs that are on the radio right now, like popular songs but like - I learned of Doja Cat through TikTok. And… yeah, I’ve got a couple. Like “Working Bitch” that we listened to today. I got that from TikTok. But it’s nice that you can obtain the information on what the song is from TikTok. Also I follow a playlist called “Songs From TikTok” that I’ve gone through on Spotify.

LB: Do you know who made this? Like did TikTok or Spotify make it?

KB: Oh no wait! My sister made this.

(I may have interviewed the wrong sister).

LB: Any standout memes/musical moments?

KB: So the music stuff, one person will make something and then see what everyone else has made, and then you can make something from it. The dances… it’s fun seeing them evolve, like how everyone does it with their own flair. Or are copying the original content creators.

Right after this question we got slightly sidetracked discussing TikTok’s HypeHouse (a collective of young TikTok creators). It was mostly lamenting how a bunch of teenagers are way more successful than we’ll ever be. I figured I’d spare you.

LB: And my last question is: Am I cool enough to make TikToks?

KB: No. I’m not either.

While I disagree with Kate’s analysis of my coolness, I have to admit she had some good insights. My favorite thing she said was that “even if you think that [TikTok is] silly, and that you don’t understand it, doesn’t mean that it’s not a legitimate thing.” Shot at me aside, I think that’s the right way to look at TikTok and the changing music landscape in general. You can sit back and scoff all you want, but at the end of the day, it’s not about personal feelings. It’s about what’s making money. And in my book, anything that’s making artists money is a good thing.

I think it’s about time I really give TikTok a go. And who knows? Maybe one day Off Pitch will become a viral dance TikTok account. But until that day comes, thanks for continuing to tune in.

Lyle B.

Off Pitch Pop Picks - "I Took A Pill In Ibiza"

One of my favorite things in the world to do is recommend music. As you’ve (hopefully) seen by now, my preferred medium so far has been through those Pick Me Up posts I put up every couple days on the Off Pitch Instagram. But sometimes, I’ll have thoughts on a song that’s so well-known that pretending as if I’m “recommending” it would be ridiculous. To put it simply: you’ve heard these before. That’s why I’m kicking off this new article series, Pop Picks, to give myself a chance to talk about hit songs in a bit of a longer format (I wanted to call this Top of the Pops but I’m afraid of getting sued by the BBC. Who will definitely read this).

My first Pop Pick is going to be a bit of a surprise for anyone familiar with my taste in music, AKA most likely everyone reading this right now. I’m not anti-pop, obviously, but I’m almost never a fan of anything that gets overplayed. And for a while, that included “I Took A Pill In Ibiza.” I must’ve heard that song a thousand times in its initial run. And every time I’d hear that iconic opening line, which I’m blanking on right now, I’d hate it just a little more. I didn’t like Mike Posner telling me he was cooler than me, and I sure as hell didn’t need him crooning about all the partying he did over tropical EDM nonsense. But luckily for me, trends come and go. After a few weeks dominating the airwaves, “I Took A Pill In Ibiza” joined the other ghosts of pop hits past. This particular radio fatigue nightmare was over.

I don’t remember exactly how this next part happened. Either I gave the track a spin in the car during an episode of nostalgia, or maybe it popped back up on the radio, or I saw it mentioned in an article. Whatever it was, something caused me to re-listen to the song with a more careful ear. And to my surprise, I found that the lyrics really resonated with me. I actually think my unusual hatred of “Cooler Than Me” made me empathize with Mike on a deeper level. I mean, if there was one thing I could relate to, it was being hurt by the disaster that was “Cooler Than Me.” But I digress. The fallen star narrative was intriguing, and Mike seemed truly genuine in his lyrical confessions. Not to mention how catchy the song is (which is what made it so overplayed in the first place).

It’s clear to me now that Mike Posner’s entire career has been an elaborate long con to get me to listen to his song and think, “Oh, that’s actually pretty good.” Well, congrats Mr. Posner. You’ve reached the pinnacle of artistic achievement: changing my mind.

Lyle B.

If you’ve forgotten what the song sounds like, refresh your memory here:

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Forgotify's Finest - "I Want To Be The One"

My biggest gripe with doing music reviews is that a lot of the time, what needs to be said about an album has already been said. But what if nothing’s been said about an album because no one has ever heard it before? That’s the concept behind this new series of reviews I’m calling Forgotify’s Finest. My secret weapon here is Forgotify, a website that randomly selects one of the millions of tracks on Spotify that has literally never been played (That’s right, I said millions. I could do this series forever). But since Forgotify’s algorithm is completely random, I had to impose a few ground rules:

1. The track must be music. I’m not going to be reviewing any sound effects or voice memos or whatever else might be sitting on some dusty virtual shelf in Spotify’s massive library.

2. The track must be SOMEWHAT professional-sounding. I’m also not going to roast some kid who uploaded a homemade cover of his or her favorite song. That seems too mean-spirited.

3. The track must be attached to a full project, so I have more material to work with.

Luckily, the very first thing I landed on met all my criteria. The song is “I Want To Be The One,” off an album released in 2002 called N Ster Vir My (A Star For Me) by an artist called Ice. Oh, what’s that? Who is Ice? Believe me, I wish I knew. I’m assuming Ice is the woman on the cover of this album, but I can’t even say that with any authority. This particular album isn’t even listed under the correct artist named Ice on Spotify. Google was also not helpful in my research aside from confirming that the title of this album is in Afrikaans. So, let’s move forward with the assumption that Ice is a woman from South Africa. Now buckle up, because things are about to get weird.

The first thing I have to mention is the skips, because it’s most likely the first thing you’ll notice. Every single song on N Ster Vir My sounds like it’s being played on a broken record player. At first I wondered if this might be an intentional artistic choice, but the album is a pretty conventional pop record otherwise. It wouldn’t make much sense to me to play things so straightforward but get all experimental in this one weird aspect. So is it some sort of demo? An accidental upload? A vivid auditory hallucination I had while trying to think of article ideas? All are possible, but none quite make sense. Skips aside, the production as a whole doesn’t feel very finished. But if this is just a rough draft then where is the final product?

Let’s talk about the tracklist. The first song, “Een+ Een,” didn’t really raise any red flags from me besides the skips mentioned above. The second track, “Under Attack,” was where things got interesting. On “Een+ Een” I had noticed that while the production was rough, the vocals weren’t terrible. Actually, they had sort of a classic 80s pop aesthetic to them. “Under Attack” took that to another level. The vocals were damn near ABBA-esque, and I started to wonder if a more polished version of this album might actually be pretty decent. It wasn’t until a few songs later that I realized why “Under Attack” reminded me so much of ABBA. It’s a damn ABBA song. Of course, the second I put two and two together, I started Googling every song title on the tracklist. I didn’t have much luck with the titles in Afrikaans, but I could find enough of the English titles to confirm my suspicions: this is a cover album. “Do You Wanna Make Something Of It” is by Jo Dee Messina. “One Night A Day” is by Garth Brooks. “I Want To Be The One,” the song that brought me here, is by Lonestar. What’s interesting to me is that most of these are country songs, but not all of them are. For instance, “To Earn The Glory” appears to be a cover of a song by Fredi Nest, another South African musician. So it’s not really a country covers album, but it’s not NOT a country covers album. I guess inconsistency is just about the only thing that’s consistent when it comes to N Ster Vir My.

In all seriousness, it’s hard to criticize this album too much. It clearly wasn’t intended to be listened to in this state, and if it was, it’s operating at a level of genius beyond my comprehension. Is it worth your time to listen to? Probably not, unless you want to check out a song or two to get some context for this article. Personally, my biggest takeaway from N Ster Vir My is intense curiosity. I’d love to know more about Ice, as well as some of the songs on here that may or may not be covers. And who is the mysterious Trio Records responsible for putting out this strange album? I may never find the answers to these questions. But I’m just one man. If anyone out there recognizes this artist or any of these songs, please reach out and let me know. Because frankly I’m worried I won’t be able to sleep again as long as these mysteries haunt me.

I’m not sure if this edition of Forgotify’s Finest was a success or a failure, but I’m looking forward to doing it again. One of these days I’m going to find a diamond in the rough. And when that happens, it’ll all have been worth it.

Lyle B.

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What's the Point of Writing about Music?

I know, I know. This doesn’t seem like the best opening post for a website that, by all indications, will be writing about music. But the good news is, this isn’t a rhetorical question. I obviously think there’s a point to this, and I think it’s important for the millions of you reading this to understand where Off Pitch is coming from.

Before I dive in, let me give a little background info on myself. My name is Lyle, and by day I work for an entertainment business management firm. Basically, I’m a numbers guy. Definitely not a “writer.” Even growing up, I never had much interest in writing. I mean sure, I was killing it in AP Lit back in high school, but I just never really caught the bug. Hell, a career in catching bugs would have made a lot more sense given my interests as a kid. But here’s the thing: writing is just about the easiest way to get involved in a creative medium. So about a year ago, hungry for a creative outlet, a friend and I started writing mini song reviews for an Instagram account called The Pick Me Up (get it?). It didn’t take long for me to realize how much I loved writing about a subject I was passionate about. Eventually, The Pick Me Up fell by the wayside, but I still felt that creative hunger. The next logical step was to take a stab at more in-depth articles, and thus Off Pitch was born.

“Now that’s all well and good, Lyle,” you’re probably thinking. “You seem like a cool and smart guy and I look forward to reading your work religiously. But you didn’t answer the question!” Don’t worry, I’m getting there. That thing I said about low barriers to entry? It’s the reason I’ve been skeptical about this kind of writing for most of my life. Seems like everyone and their mother has a blog/podcast/YouTube channel dedicated to explaining why In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is the greatest album of all time. I knew that by doing something like this, I’d just be another voice adding to the noise. And let’s be honest, a lot of that noise is redundant. That’s why I firmly believe that we don’t need more music nerds like myself just echoing Pitchfork’s latest opinion every week.

Right about now, you should be thoroughly confused as to what my point is. And that’s fine, because so am I. I’m basically just sitting here ranting to Microsoft Word. But in a way, that’s kinda my point. I want to try and keep things interesting. I think there are plenty of great writers out there doing the heavy lifting when it comes to music journalism, both at the professional and amateur level. And that’s awesome. But over here at Off Pitch, we’re gonna get weird with it. You can expect some hot takes, some dumb jokes, and at least one Pulitzer for journalism.

So, what’s the point of writing about music? I have no idea (oh yeah: expect plenty of disappointment too). Just kidding. Here it is: the point of all of this to me is to get you engaged in and excited about music, one way or another. I just hope on this website, it ends up being a lot more “another.” Either way, it’s gonna be a lot of fun. At least for me.

So. Welcome to Off Pitch. Tune in next week for THE definitive explanation on why In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is the greatest album of all time.

Lyle B.