tiktok
Page: 21
The scene will be immediately familiar to anyone who has attended a music festival: a DJ riling up a crowd, playing a hit but ratcheting up the anticipation by toying with the melody before the drums charge to the rescue. Only this time, the hit hadn’t come out yet — the South Korean producer Peggy Gou was teasing an unreleased single titled “(It Goes Like) Nanana.”
Attendees at the Lost Nomads festival outside of Marrakesh hardly seemed to mind; a TikTok video capturing Gou’s set shows listeners throwing their hands in the air with abandon. One onlooker, standing behind the DJ’s right shoulder, removes the cigarette hanging unlit from his lips to unleash a hoot just as the percussion hits.
That sunset TikTok clip helped kickstart a viral chain of events that has turned “(It Goes Like) Nanana” into Gou’s mainstream breakthrough. The single is her first to scale the Billboard charts, climbing inside the top 40 on the Global 200, and it’s earned 24.5 million on-demand streams in the U.S. since its release, according to Luminate. For a time it was the lead track on Spotify’s flagship playlist Today’s Top Hits, a spot usually taken up by major-label superstars, not dance producers on the independent label XL.
No one is more surprised than Gou. She didn’t have TikTok when “(It Goes Like) Nanana” started to go like viral; she found out about that success from her friends. She also doesn’t watch the charts. “I really did not expect this reaction,” Gou says. “My song was never on a chart before. In the beginning I wasn’t sure what [charting] meant exactly.”
But the excursion into new commercial territory is welcome — a relief, in fact. After her rubbery 2019 single “Starry Night” became popular on dancefloors, Gou felt pressured to top it. “Sometimes pressure is a good thing,” she says. “It always kind of pushes me.”
“(It Goes Like) Nanana” was born during the pandemic, while Gou was binging dance music and hip-hop from the 1990s. The simplicity of the house music she absorbed from that decade stood out: “A lot of the hooks are repetitive, but it’s still catchy, you don’t get bored.” She cites SNAP!’s chugging hit “Rhythm Is a Dancer” and the German producer ATB as touchstones.
Musical train-spotters on TikTok have thrown out a handful of other references in video comments: Kylie Minogue! (Presumably because she knows her way around a “la-la-la,” which isn’t too far from a “na-na-na.”) “I Like To Move It”! (Maybe in the progression of the bass line?) A Touch of Class’s “Around the World;” Gala’s “Freed From Desire” — take a fistful of Ultimate Dance Party CDs from the second half of the ’90s, throw them in a blender, and you might get something along the lines of “(It Goes Like) Nanana.”
[embedded content]
Gou’s biggest tracks to date — “Starry Night” and “It Makes You Forget (Itgehane)” — are sung predominantly in Korean. But when she tried that approach on “(It Goes Like) Nanana,” “it didn’t really work,” so she ended up singing it all in English instead. Gou also subbed in an entirely new bass line at the last minute before she started playing it out at festivals like Lost Nomads.
Badr Bounailat, who shot the popular video of Gou near Marrakesh on June 3rd and posted it June 5th, has two theories about why it amassed over 7 million views. First, he says, “I’m a photographer, and that’s a good frame.” (The top comment on his post: “Can we talk about that zoom quality ouffff.”) Second: “People were in it, they were responding well to the song.”
The scenic locale may have helped as well. Harmony Soleil, music director for KNHC, a dance radio station in Seattle, was excited to find the video of Gou in her feed. “I’m a tiny bit obsessed with her, in a not weird way,” Soleil jokes. “She’s always in amazing places. What do you mean, you’re in Morocco and you’re in Spain and you’re in Japan?” (Soleil has been playing Gou on KNHC, jumping at the chance “to support an artist who hasn’t had a lot of U.S. radio airplay otherwise.”)
Thanks to all the online attention, by the time “(It Goes Like) Nanana” was officially released on June 15th, Gou felt like the track “was already out.” She was quickly inundated with requests from DJs — from “EDM to jungle to soul to hardcore techno” — asking for stems to make their own remixes.
The biggest re-work has come from Ian Asher, a DJ and producer with a large following who has a knack for making mash-ups that drive TikTokers wild. Asher, who calls “Starry Night” “a classic,” decided to fuse Gou’s single with CamelPhat’s “Cola,” a skipping but hard-nosed dance track that became an international hit in 2017. “What I love about it is that you have two party songs,” Asher explains, “but one is very bright and summery, and the other is like you’re going into a nightclub.”
His mash-up from July went bananas on both TikTok and Instagram, appearing in more than 780,000 user created videos. The “Cola x Nanana” meld is not officially available, which in practice means there are bootleg versions on Spotify, YouTube, and SoundCloud as of this week. “It keeps getting taken down, but people keep re-finding it and uploading it on every platform,” Asher notes. “It’s a whole mini-drama.” (It gets taken down because the remix is technically unauthorized; Gou only gave stems to the German DJ-producer Boys Noize.)
The social media fervor around “(It Goes Like) Nanana” in its various forms propelled the track out of the world of independent-label dance music. “I first became aware of Peggy about three years ago on more of an underground level,” says Jonathan Geronimo, vp of electronic/dance programming for SiriusXM. He found out about “(It Goes Like) Nanana” from his colleagues overseeing TikTok Radio, saw that it was “exploding globally,” and put it into rotation a few days after its official release. SiriusXM has played the track more than 700 times since, and Geronimo believes it has “a shot” to make the jump over to pop radio, “especially with the format really keeping a close eye on what’s happening on TikTok.”
Gou’s single hit the Global 200 in July and has since climbed to No. 33, giving her a strong tailwind as she finalizes her full-length debut, due out early in 2024. The album also draws on her recent dive into ’90s sounds. Once again, though, she is feeling the need to top herself. “I don’t think there’s any track on my album that’s as catchy as ‘Nanana,’” Gou says. “The second single that’s coming out is very different — close to pop.”
That said, predicting audience reactions is notoriously difficult — she didn’t know that millions of listeners would find “(It Goes Like) Nanana” so bewitching. Still, the pressure remains. “My mindset is always: I can do better,” Gou adds. “I can do better.”
The algorithms continue their takeover: On Tuesday (Sept. 12), Spotify rolled out “daylist,” a “hyper-personalized, dynamic” playlist that updates throughout the day to “bring together the niche music and microgenres you usually listen to during particular moments in the day or on specific days of the week.”
Daylist is now available in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland, according to Spotify’s announcement. The playlist updates several times “between sunup and sundown.” After that, who knows — listeners may have to choose their own music for a few hours before bedtime.
Spotify was once known for its editorial playlists like Today’s Top Hits and Baila Reggaeton. Since these functioned much like radio, concentrating a lot of listener attention on the same handful of songs, they were watched closely in the music industry. Placements were eagerly sought after due to their ability to drive a lot of streaming activity.
But since at least 2019, Spotify has been increasingly focused on rolling out auto-personalized playlists. That year, the service took collections like Beast Mode and Chill Hits, which previously had been the same for all listeners, and personalized them “for each listener based on their particular taste,” according to a company press release. (This change did not affect the biggest editorial playlists.)
Spotify found that this shift had three effects. Most importantly for the streaming service, listeners tuned in to personalized collections for longer. This is notable: Users were more likely to keep playing songs that Spotify fed to them based on their previous listening habits, rather than tracks selected by editors. Chalk one up to the machines.
In addition, the drive towards personalization meant that the streaming wealth was spread across more acts — raising “the number of artists featured on playlists by 30% and the number of songs listeners are discovering by 35%,” according to the company’s announcement. “We found that, after discovering a song through a personalized editorial playlist, the number of listeners who then seek out the track on their own for repeat listens is up by 80%,” Spotify’s blog post continued. “In fact, the average number of times a listener saves a track is up 66%.”
Personalization has become more important than ever in the age of TikTok, which is constantly praised for its ability to discern small differences between users’ preferences and serve up videos that keep them scrolling. “Everything on TikTok feels like it was meant especially for you,” one music executive told Billboard last year.
Daylight is Spotify’s latest attempt to generate that same feeling.
“You’re ever-changing,” the company wrote, “and your playlists should be too.”
HipHopWired Featured Video
Source: Jacob Wackerhausen / Getty
A video of a Black woman in Houston who was allegedly bashed in the face with a brick by a man she rejected has gone viral and sparked outrage and discussion.
As reported by Madame Noire, in video shared on TikTok, influencer and “junior scholar and former journalist” Rho Bashe posted a clip that showed her brutally beaten in the aftermath of being attacked by an unidentified man with a brick. Bashe tearfully details that the man who attacked her did so because she declined to give him her phone number. “Y’all, this man just hit me in my face with a brick and all these Black men just watched. This man…grabbed a rock and hit me in my face because I wouldn’t give him my number,” she said.
Bashe then started yelling at the onlookers for not taking any action and letting the man leave unbothered. One of them responded, “What did you want us to do?” after the Houston woman yelled at them. “I want you to be a man and do something. You gonna let a man hit me in my face?” she responded. In a follow-up video, Bashe is seen in a hospital gown in tears, with a large swollen lump on the right side of her face.“How is this okay? This is what y’all doin’ to women?”, she said.
The video has gotten numerous views on social media and spurred trolls who’ve cherry-picked videos from Bashe’s account to try to claim that her past actions justified the attack. This has led others to come to her defense, including author Candice Marie Bonbon who wrote a thread on X, formerly Twitter decrying the ill behavior: “Men searched her socials and are using her clips (she’s a feminist) to justify why men shouldn’t have intervened. This is truly hell.”
Bashe posted a follow-up video on TikTok on Tuesday (September 5th), stating that she has endured “a lot of bullying and bullshit” since she posted the original videos. She stated that her assailant “jumped in a car with a bunch of Black women” before getting away. “Y’all know who he is. Put him out there,” she pleaded. “Center his face and then talk about it because he’s the one that got to make a choice. I didn’t get to make a fucking choice.” She would then go on to thank everyone who amplified her story and defended her.
HipHopWired Radio
Our staff has picked their favorite stations, take a listen…
All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, Billboard may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes.
Style trends come and go, but there are some pieces that will never go out of fashion. Much like a timeless pair of Converse Chuck Taylors, the Maison Margiela Tabi has garnered a cult following that TikTokers and celebrities can’t get enough of. Artists such as Dua Lipa and Nick Jonas have been spotted showing off the hoof-shaped shoe on the red carpet and off-duty, proving its versatility and trendiness.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
Unlike most fashion-forward items though, the Tabi shoe has divided the style community, with some considering the shoe an iconic statement piece, while others look at it with disgust or curiosity. While it may continue to split fashion lovers, once the shoe made its debut, it has forever stuck with onlookers both in and out of the fashion community.
What exactly is the controversial shoe? Below, we break it down and offer a few affordable options.
What is the Maison Margiela Tabi?
The popular shoe comes in a variety of styles from heels, Mary Janes, ballet flats and even sneakers. What sets it apart from any other type of shoe is the split to design that creates a hoof-like appearance.
Dua Lipa seen on a night out at Chiltern Firehouse on July 21, 2023 in London.
Ricky Vigil M /Justin E Palmer/GC Images
Designer Martin Margiela created the shoe after being inspired during a trip to Japan. Margiela took the unique split-toe design of traditional Japanese work shoes and infused it with high heels to create a fashion-forward shoe. Once the design was complete and ready to hit the runway, it made its debut in the 1980s and caught viewers attention; eventually gathering a cult following that has remained strong, growing and kept the style relevant even today.
Gen Z has hopped on the trend, with TikTokers taking to the platform to show off their own collection. User @madeleinewould created a montage video that’s garnered over 118,000 likes and shows the variety of styles and colors available.
“A Tabi tour as requested,” the caption said.
If you’re looking to splurge, Nordstrom currently has a bootie style that’s perfect for a fall fashion refresh, but we’ve also put a couple wallet-friendly alternatives below.
Keep reading to shop the style below.
Nordstrom
Maison Margiela Tabi Boot
$1,090
For a luxe yet unique take on ankle boots, these Tabi shoes feature the iconic split toe center and a black leather material that’ll elevate practically every look from your denim and white T-shirt to your trousers and blouse.
Amazon
Japanese Cushioned Tabi Shoes
$50.51 $79.93 37% OFF
Stay on trend with a pair of everyday Tabi shoes featuring a rubber sole that’ll help grip the pavement and a sock-like, pull-on design for added comfort that’ll move with you wherever your day takes you.
Marugo Tabi Action Shoes Split Toe Sneakers
$76.06 $85.95 12% OFF
Add some sportiness to your look with a pair of trendy Tabi sneakers that are available in three shades including red, white and black. The style has a lace-up design that you can personalize to your liking and a mesh and knit material that’s breathable for added comfort.
For more product recommendations, check out our roundups of the best band T-shirts, jelly shoes and platform boots.
It was the dance heard ’round the world. Except, as Miley Cyrus shares during the latest video in her “Used to Be Young” TikTok series, the pole she twirled around in her infamous 2009 Teen Choice Awards performance of “Party in the U.S.A.” was not of the stripper variety. The clip opens with presenters Shailene […]
Alt-folk singer-songwriter Noah Kahan has enjoyed a breakout 2023, cracking the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time with the single “Dial Drunk” and pulling in more than 800 million on-demand streams across his catalog. But he has not released a music video this year, choosing instead to prioritize the 15-ish second clips that trigger activity on TikTok and YouTube Shorts.
“I am very much of the mindset that music videos have a limited value presently,” says Drew Simmons, who manages Kahan. “I have been moving the vast majority, if not all, of our video budgets over to short-form content efforts.”
“Dial Drunk” is in good company: None of the top four songs on the Billboard Hot 100 this week have a traditional music video. (Morgan Wallen released a performance video for his hit, while Luke Combs and Oliver Anthony have put out live clips for theirs.) While few acts wielded music videos more effectively in the 2010s than Beyoncé, a year after the release of her Renaissance album, she has yet to put out any official videos to accompany it.
Creative director Evan Blum, who has shot popular TikTok clips for Demi Lovato and Flyana Boss, sums up the new landscape succinctly: “The only problem with music videos is that nobody sees them.” Aside from that, he quips, “they’re great.”
For roughly four decades, music videos played a crucial role in minting hits — allowing artists to immerse fans in their visual vocabulary or wow them with dance moves. The format’s influence has been waning since attention shifted from TVs to phone screens. Still, through the 2010s, superstars like Lady Gaga and Drake invested heavily in clips that caromed around the internet, while burgeoning stars like Doja Cat and Dua Lipa could go viral and gain steam with eye-catching visuals of their own.
Even that is starting to seem unusual. Executives believe a lot of the change is due to TikTok, which hooked a generation on bite-sized vertical clips. “If you brought up a music video to plenty of kids, they’d be like, ‘What’s that?’” a major label marketing executive says. “It’s just not where the audience is. The audience is on TikTok.”
In a statement, Paul Hourican, global head of music content and partnerships at TikTok, stressed “that long-form videos will continue to be one of the key forms of musical creative expression.” But, he added “the rise of short-form video on TiKTok represents a new approach to music promotion and discovery, which has significantly lowered the barrier to creativity and expression for artists.”
YouTube, the longtime home of music videos in the digital age, also rolled out its own TikTok imitator, YouTube Shorts. Music executives say this intensified the emphasis on short-form content. (A rep for YouTube declined to comment. In March, YouTube global head of music Lyor Cohen called Shorts just “the entry point” on the platform, “leading fans to discover the depth of an artist’s catalog, including music videos.”)
In this landscape, full-length music videos often fail to resonate. Cassie Petrey is the co-founder of Crowd Surf, a digital marketing company; if her clients release a music video, she frequently chops it up into snackable clips that can be uploaded to short-form platforms. “We’ll see millions of views on the short-form, and the long-form will only get like 50,000,” she says.
Managers and marketers say the cost of music videos can range from as low as $5,000 to as high as $250,000, and leap into seven figures for a handful of superstars. And at a moment when music discovery is fragmented and there are no mass media that ensure a large audience for these videos as MTV used to, artist teams have to spend even more if they hope to corral viewers who are overwhelmed with a glut of audio and visual content. “You have to pay for visibility,” one manager says.
This means that the bang-for-buck ratio on many music videos can be upside down — impact low, cost high — at a time when budgets are already under scrutiny due to a wobbly economy. So instead of spending a chunk of change on a lone three-and-half minute statement, Simmons has found success using that money to shoot a large number of short clips for his artists.
“You’ll get a whole lot more content out of it,” the manager says. “The frequency of that and how you drop it through an album cycle is frankly critical to building an artist, continuing to remain relevant and be in people’s feeds. It allows for a conversation between an artist and their fans that can be ongoing and move fluidly.”
This is also a more flexible strategy at a time when artists and labels have little control over what is going to be a hit. “The more the song gets out there [via short clips], the better it should do,” the major label marketer says. If that’s not what’s happening, better to learn that before sinking $50,000 into a full video.
There are still instances in which investing in a traditional video makes sense. “The value varies significantly based on genre,” says one senior executive. “For Latin music and for hip-hop, the audience for music discovery really lives very strongly on YouTube. So music videos are a really important aspect of that.”
On the other hand, “pop and R&B are where music videos are kind of dying, especially for developing artists,” the executive continues. “They don’t move the needle for discovery.” Superstars remain, of course, the exception to every rule: They have both the money and the fervent supporters to do whatever they want.
While recent videos for singles like Victoria Monet’s “On My Mama” have been well-received thanks to suave choreography, this sort of boost often recedes quickly — unless a song becomes part of a short-form trend. Another way to extend a traditional video’s half-life is by courting controversy: Three of the most widely discussed music videos of this decade are Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s “WAP,” Lil Nas X’s “Montero” and Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town.”
Blum believes there’s one more key reason to make a music video: “If a music video is going to make an artist feel fulfilled, then there’s a lot of value in that,” he says. “A happy artist is a good artist.”
“But obviously most people aren’t after that [fulfillment] — they want views,” Blum continues. “If your reason for making a music video is, ‘I want to get as many eyes as possible,’ I don’t think that [presuming you will] is a correct assumption anymore.”
All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, Billboard may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes.
TikTok makeup gurus have announced a new beauty product to line your vanity and bathroom shelves with — and it’s a classic. Makeup By Mario’s blush stick has been getting rave reviews on the social platform and on retailers like Sephora, Kohl’s and Amazon for its easy application and “creamy” formula. And, as summer winds down and we look towards fall beauty looks, this blush stick will easily be one your makeup bag calls out for.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
Blush is that one component of makeup routines that can tie your entire look together whether you’re going for the tomato girl makeup look or a clean beauty appearance. Either way, adding a little color to your cheeks can just add a touch of chicness and/or glamour. Powder formulas used to be the norm, but now it seems that cream and liquid blushes are taking over makeup routines — and Makeup By Mario’s Soft Pop Blush Stick just proves it.
TikTok user @asap.samantha posted a video deeming the Pale Petal color the “shade of the summer” followed by swiping the stick onto their wrist to show off the product. It’s racked up over 907,000 views with people commenting on how it’s “the perfect blush” and that it’s “the best shade by far.”
“Pale Petal is that girl” the caption of the video read followed by in-video text that said “pov: you found the perfect blush shade for summer.”
https://www.tiktok.com/@asap.samantha/video/7241575235764505862
Keep reading to shop the viral Soft Pop Blush Stick below.
Sephora
Makeup By Mario – Soft Pop Blush Stick
$30
The Soft Pop Blush Stick is not just a bestseller, but comes in six shades to stock up on and wear year-round. The dual-ended design features the blush on one side and a brush on the other end for blending on the go. Its formula was made to be creamy and uses vegan ingredients that’s buildable, helps moisturize skin and aims to leave a dewy look once applied.
Sephora reviewers can’t stop raving about how “it melts into your skin” formula and that “EVERYTHING about it is perfect.”
For more product recommendations, check out our roundups of the best refillable lipsticks, powder foundation and celeb-loved beauty products.
Ciara is standing up to the haters. The “1, 2 Step” singer took to Twitter on Sunday (Aug. 20) to reply to a tweet accusing her of making “TikTok music.” The user is an assistant coach at William & Mary Tribe Women’s Basketball in Virginia, according to her Twitter profile. “And.. ..you’re watching…:) taking time […]
If you give a hoot about feel-good songs on TikTok, there’s a solid chance you’ve heard Paul Russell’s “Lil Boo Thang” by now. A full version of the infectious song, which interpolates “Best of My Love” by The Emotions, has been cleared for landing and is set for release on streaming services at midnight on Friday (Aug. 18). Billboard has also learned that Arista Records has officially signed Russell, a Texas native now based in Los Angeles, ahead of the song drop.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
The proof of “Lil Boo Thang”’s virality is in the stats. Russell teased a 21-second snippet of the track via TikTok on June 28, with the post garnering over 5.3 million views and launching over 55,000 “creations” from new fans who’ve paired it with everything from clips of their dogs to best-friend tributes to fitness milestones. Russell later repurposed the post on Instagram Reels, where he reeled in another 10.4 million views.
In six subsequent TikTok posts that included the song, with lyrics like “Tell ‘em you found a lil’ something too fresh” and the folksy “I don’t give a hoot what your dude say,” Russell has generated another 4 million views and dozens of comments with varying versions of “Dude, drop the full version now!!!“. (He again cloned these follow-ups on Reels, bringing in millions more listens for the song clip.)
The infectiousness of “Lil Boo Thing” owes quite a bit to the legendary bounce of “Best of My Love,” a disco-funk anthem written by Maurice White and Al McKay of Earth, Wind & Fire that spent five weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 in 1977 and was The Emotions’ biggest hit.
Courtesy Photo
The full version of “Lil Boo Thang” (see the single cover, right) has received 20,000 pre-saves to date.
“First and foremost, ‘Lil Boo Thang’ is meant to be a good time,” said Russell ahead of the full track release. “When I wrote it, I was stressed out on a Thursday afternoon, so I just turned on some of the music that makes me happy and imagined that I was celebrating something. I think what makes the song special is the fact that so many of us are ready to just forget about whatever is happening around us and enjoy the good things in life — not just thinking back to good times in the past but creating new ones in the present day.”
The Cornell graduate has nearly 2 million monthly listeners on Spotify, with 14 million streams for his 2022 single “Ms. Poli Sci” and 7.3 million for 2021’s “Hallelujah.”
Check out the TikTok post that started it all:
The music team at TikTok was hit with layoffs last week in an effort to improve efficiency, multiple sources tell Billboard. The cuts affected seven staff members, including senior product strategy & ops lead Kelly Chen and U.S. music partnerships and operations lead Marisa Jeffries. All affected employees were based in the United States. Sources […]