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Discovering the Music of Mother Mother: An Internet Sensation

Imagine thousands of fireworks exploding in a radical display of colors on a perfectly temperature-d summer night. Now, imagine you’re sitting next to the person you love most, while realizing your time on Earth will be over one day. This colorful picture of a scene is exactly how I felt listening to the band Mother Mother for the first time. 

I first heard the Canadian band Mother Mother one random day while mindlessly browsing through the app TikTok. I have heard hundreds, maybe even thousands, of sounds on the app and normally they don’t mean much to me – but this was different. The track was the song Hayloft, a song that has over 52 million streams on Spotify, and was a chart topper in their native country. The song has a tension to it that felt like something I’ve never heard before, and the instrumental guitar riffs sound like something you could hear in a stadium rock show. Combining dark lyrical content with bright and poppy vocals is a move of genius that just works. I immediately fell in love with the track, and needed to know more about the group. I never would’ve guessed what was coming next. 

After doing a quick Google search of Mother Mother, I found that many of their songs were popular on TikTok simply because they have such a unique sound that can match the quirky energy of the app almost perfectly. Feeling frustrated in a way, because how could such amazing music exist without my knowledge? Especially for someone who spends day and night listening to music, it seemed almost impossible that I had never even heard of the band before. It seemed this was the case for many of the bands new fans, as there was even a Rolling Stone write-up written in October titled `TikTok is giving a niche indie band’s 2008 music millions of new streams’ which just goes to show how many other like-minded people there are – and not just myself. 

After listening to the darkly beautiful and twisted track ‘Hayloft’, I was soon pulled into tracks like the hauntingly mellow sounds of ‘Ghosting’, the rushed eerieness of ‘Oh Ana’, and the echo-ed Romeo-and-Juliet love track ‘Arms Tonite’. As a musician I have been trying to wrap my head around the guitar work and vocal harmonies, and luckily for myself, the main singer and guitarist Ryan Guldemond makes lots of videos on TikTok showing tutorials on how to play their classic tracks. 

The phenomenon of Mother Mother’s music exploding into popularity is a fairly common story now with social media – there are many bands who didn’t feel that their music was very popular when it came out, but are gaining hundreds of thousands of fans on social media platforms. Social media might be harmful in some ways, but being able to interact with fans so intimately is such a unique experience. You never know what social media can do for you as a musician. Your music may go undiscovered for years until one person plays a song and you could become a sensation overnight. This simply wouldn’t have happened twenty years ago. 

In the year 2020, when most artists are struggling to interact with fans in a meaningful way with no live performances, Mother Mother have gained more fans than they ever had in the past. They were relatively popular in Canada, and had a couple tracks do well in the U.K. a couple of years ago, but now in 2020 with no new albums out they are as popular as ever. For a year that has so many struggling, they have had the best year of all time as a band. The band has even been quoted to have said that their music simply was too weird for radio when a lot of the tracks came out, but now the younger generation loves it and they have become internet sensations. 

My deep dive into a new favorite band turned into a full story of how social media can impact the music industry very positively. Mother Mother are thriving, and will now have so many lifelong fans because of TikTok users finding amazing ways to showcase their tracks. There may be some things wrong with social media, but this is heartwarming seeing amazing artists getting the recognition they deserve. I would write more, but I’m off to go listen to some more of their music and to learn their songs on guitar! 

 

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TikTok Music: The Good, The Bad, and the Embarrassing

TikTok is a weird and wonderful place. It’s full of all kinds of people; band kids, sports fanatics, emo’s, popular girls – literally any sort of person you want to hang out with is present on the app. Lately though, the trend is to get all of the popular influencers on the app to start creating music. If you have a huge following, why not try and increase it and make more money by starting a music career? Well, sometimes this has worked out okay, but some people should just not be making music

LilHuddy: Contributing to the emo revival scene of 2021

TikToker and Hype House member Chase Hudson aka LilHuddy has recently turned to music like many other influencers. Many people weren’t surprised at this move though considering Hudson already sported a ‘eboy’ and ‘emo’ type of look, so coming up with music seemed like normal progression. Unlike other projects by influencers, the teaser for his first song ‘21st Century Vampire’ seemed like there was a lot of time and money put into the production of the track. The first single released and the follow up song ‘The Eulogy of You and Me’ might be a little cheesy – but it’s not bad! This pop-punk and emo inspired sound could easily combine the fanbases of 21st century fan girls of the eboy style and millennials fans of the early emo legends My Chemical Romance, or even rockers like Black Veil Brides. The first two songs are a good start for Chase, and if he continues to put out music like this he could easily make a living touring off of this music that many are starting to crave a revival of.

Nessa Barrett and Jxdn

A new collaborative track has been released by influences Nessa Barrett and Jaden Hossler. Jaden has been putting out songs slowly throughout his fame, but Nessa has more recently just started to release tracks. Jxdn has an edge to his music similar to LilHuddy, but it’s a bit more hip-hop focused. Jxdn has a great voice, but again the lyrics can come off a bit cheesy and not the best. Collaborating with Nessa was a great move though. Nessa, already having a huge following on TikTok for her gorgeous looks, easily made a transition to music. She has a much lighter voice, but it combines well with the edginess that Jaden brings to his music. Their collaborative track ‘la di die’ definitely hits the mark. Combining the softness and beauty of Nessa’s voice with the rough darker hip-hop sounds that Jaden brings, it’s truly a brilliant combo and one of the best TikToker turned musician tracks. 

Dixie Damelio 

It’s easy to pinpoint the worst TikTok influencers turned musician songs. One of the most embarrassing and possibly worst songs is definitely Dixie Damelio’s ‘Be Happy’. She has released a few songs now, and to be brutally honest, they are all garbage. You can tell she isn’t passionate about the music, and nothing about it is honest – it’s all fake. Her voice sounds fine, but it’s just bland. This track sounds like a KidzBop song that has an upbeat melody, but is supposed to talk about being sad. It ultimately sounds like a privileged rich girl talking about being sad, while sounding like she could care less about the song. Musically, there is nothing intriguing about the production or instrumentals. This song is embarrassing, and basically only got popular because it turned into a meme. Let me just say, I don’t think Dixie’s music career is gonna blossom into anything actually creative and intriguing for a while.

So what do you think? What do you think are the best tracks from TikTokers? Or do you have any good examples of straight-up flops? Let me know in the comments!