Tiktok & Virality: What Makes A Song Successful?

I can clearly recall being a tween in 2021 and having a very specific music taste that could not have been further from niche. I refrain from calling any phase of someone's music taste, especially mine, bad, because taste is subjective, and when it comes to music, your environment really does impact the kinds of music you listen to and enjoy. However, I do think my music taste was very representative of a young girl who spent most of her time in her room during Zoom classes, which, to be fair, was exactly who I was. I remember spending my time pretty unevenly between writing ridiculously dumb stories during class and scrolling through BuzzFeed. The latter was something that truly impacted my music taste more than I would like to admit. I spent so much of my energy being obsessed with mainstream artists, listening to the overplayed Ariana Grande songs and old Taylor Swift albums. But more than anything, I had a tendency to make one singer my entire personality: Olivia Rodrigo. I feel sick even mentioning it now because of how embarrassing the phase was for me. And it's truly nothing against Olivia, but the way I would act, the way I would present myself, I was a girl who had only recently graduated from single-digit ages and was already screaming good 4 u as if I even understood it. I made her my entire personality and tried to gatekeep an artist the entire world was already perfectly aware of. Looking back, I find it particularly funny that I was trying to act like some sort of music connoisseur while listening to the same songs everyone else was listening to.

I think about this phase quite often, mostly because it reminds me of how much the internet influenced what I listened to, how I perceived artists, I wasn't just listening to music. I was consuming everything surrounding it, from the online discourse to the drama to the personalities that came with it. Which brings me to the actual topic of discussion.

I remember being so active on BuzzFeed that I was completely aware of the entire Sabrina Carpenter, Joshua Bassett, and Olivia Rodrigo situation, which feels almost unnecessary to even think about today. I remember being torn over this one really talented singer who I thought was incredibly underrated, and I genuinely couldn't understand the need for a made-up rivalry between two girls. Even at my young age, I understood that there was no reason for one girl to become the villain simply because another girl had written a vulnerable song.

In retrospect, I understand how easy it was for the internet to mold the situation into the narrative it became. Olivia Rodrigo was this brunette eighteen-year-old girl who was sensitive and wrote vulnerable songs. Sabrina, in the eyes of the internet, was this blonde, beautiful, older girl (she really wasn't that much older, either) who had supposedly released a malicious song in response to Olivia's heartbreak. It was almost too easy to turn them into opposing characters. Olivia was the relatable girl everyone wanted to defend, and Sabrina was the girl everyone wanted to hate. The internet had its story, and it didn't seem particularly interested in whether that story was fair. What bothered me, even then, was how quickly people seemed to forget that Sabrina was an actual person with an actual music career outside of this situation. She wasn't just some girl who had supposedly wronged another girl. She was a singer who had been releasing music for years, and I genuinely loved her music. It was frustrating to see her reduced to a character in someone else's story, especially when I felt like there was so much more to her. But this isn't really the conversation I'm trying to have. I bring it up because, looking back, I think this was one of my first experiences watching the internet decide who an artist was before people had even bothered to listen to what she was making.

Fast-forward to the summer of 2022. I remember exactly where I was when emails i can't send was released. For me, it was a cultural reset, and for the longest time, I genuinely thought everyone was aware of this beautiful, vulnerable album. My most-played song on Spotify Wrapped in 2023 was Vicious, and I remember loving the image Sabrina conveyed during this era. She had this mature, graceful, feminine look, and the visuals were stunning. Her music videos were intricate in their cinematography, and everything felt so intentional. There was something about the album that felt special to me, not just because I loved the music, but because I felt like I was watching an artist develop a very distinct identity of her own.

I honestly thought everyone knew Sabrina Carpenter. Not just people my age, but everyone. I knew she was still relatively underrated, but I thought she was at least a household name in the making. She had been doing music for years, she was talented, and I assumed people knew that, even if she wasn't necessarily topping the charts. So when she gained this newfound, and very well-deserved, attention in 2024, I was confused. I was happy, obviously. This was something I had wanted for her for years. But I genuinely did not expect to see so many comments about how she had supposedly appeared out of nowhere. Suddenly, my feeds were filled with “she just popped out of nowhere” and “why is she famous?” And I remember thinking, where have you people been?

Unlike what some of the online discourse seemed to suggest, Short n' Sweet was not Sabrina Carpenter's first album. Or her second. It was her sixth. She had been releasing music for nearly a decade, and I thought that, if people weren't familiar with her entire discography, they at least knew she had been doing music for a very long time. EVOLution and Singular Act I and Singular Act II have some of my favorite songs of hers. Even during my aggressively mainstream music era, I would listen to On Purpose and In My Bed regularly. And to this day, I still know all the lyrics.

So, when I saw Sabrina announce Espresso, I was immediately excited. I adored her, and I was always looking forward to whatever she released. But I don't think I, or probably anyone else, expected that this particular song would become the song that changed everything for her. Espresso became one of the biggest pop songs of the year, reached the billion-stream milestone, and even gave us the now very recognizable phrase “this was supposed to be her/his espresso.” It was everywhere. And while I was obviously thrilled that Sabrina was finally getting the recognition she deserved, I couldn't help but wonder why this was the song that did it.

Because, honestly, I had always felt that way about Sabrina's music. I remember listening to her earlier albums and thinking that she was so talented, and I felt that way about a lot of her lead singles, too. So what was it about Espresso that made it the song that catapulted her career into something so big that even I, someone who had followed her for years, was almost caught off guard? Why this song, and why now?

When I started thinking about what makes a song successful, I realized that Espresso checked off a lot of boxes. First, the song itself is genuinely catchy. The lyrics are clever, the melody is memorable, and Sabrina's use of analogy makes the song fun to listen to. You could argue that the lyrics aren't particularly poetic, and I wouldn't necessarily disagree. I'm saying this as a fan. The song isn't exactly going to win awards for its lyrical complexity, but I don't think that's necessarily the point. The lyrics get the job done. They're smart enough to make you appreciate them, simple enough to remember, and catchy enough to get stuck in your head for the rest of the day.

But that makes me wonder what the job actually is nowadays. What makes a song good? And what makes people decide that a song is worth listening to, talking about, and ultimately making a part of their lives?

The first thing that comes to mind is TikTok. It's almost impossible to talk about popular music today without talking about TikTok and the way it influences what we listen to. So many songs become popular through trends, and sometimes it feels like a song's success is tied to whether or not people can find a way to use it in a fifteen-second video. In the case of Espresso, the line “I'm working late, 'cause I'm a…” practically invited people to finish the sentence themselves. It was funny, easy to adapt, and applicable to pretty much anyone. People could use it to make a joke about their jobs, school, relationships, or whatever else they felt like sharing. It was no longer just Sabrina's lyric. It became something people could make their own.

We've seen this happen with so many songs. Even with Die With a Smile, the lyric “If the world was ending, I wanna be next to…” became a trend where people could fill in the blank with whoever or whatever they loved. And, of course, the song itself is beautiful. I'm not suggesting that people only like it because of TikTok, or that a song is somehow less meaningful because it becomes popular online. I think there's something really interesting about the way people take a lyric and make it personal to them. Music has always been something people use to express feelings they can't necessarily put into their own words, and TikTok has simply given people another way to do that.

But I do wonder what happens to the songs that don't lend themselves so easily to this kind of consumption. What happens to the songs that are beautifully written but don't have a lyric that can be turned into a trend? What about the albums that take a few listens to appreciate, or the songs that are so emotionally specific that you can't really separate one lyric from the rest of the song? Are they less likely to receive attention because they're harder to turn into content? I think this is where the idea of being “Tiktok-able” becomes more complicated, because it's not just about the lyrics. It's about the artist's entire image and the persona they present to the public. It's about the way their music sounds, the way their music videos look, the way they dress, the way they speak, and the kind of person people perceive them to be. An artist can release a really good song, but if there's no recognizable identity attached to it, no aesthetic people can replicate or no personality people can become invested in, it sometimes feels like the song has a harder time reaching the same level of attention.

Sabrina Carpenter is a particularly interesting example of this because of how much her image changed between emails i can't send and Short n' Sweet. The earlier era had a more subdued, introspective quality to it, while Short n' Sweet embraced a much more playful, feminine, and theatrical image. The styling was different, the music videos had a distinct visual identity, and the whole era felt like it belonged to a very specific version of Sabrina. It was still her, obviously, but it was a version of her that was much easier to immediately recognize and associate with a particular sound and aesthetic. And this isn't a bad thing. Artists have always reinvented themselves, and there's nothing wrong with wanting to create a cohesive visual identity around an album. In fact, I love when artists put that much thought into their visuals. I'm someone who will happily spend hours watching music videos, analyzing the cinematography, and thinking about how the visuals contribute to the music. I love when an artist creates an entire world around an album. But I think social media has made that world almost as important as the music itself, because it gives people something else to consume, discuss, and participate in.

Taylor Swift is probably one of the clearest examples of this. With The Eras Tour, she turned her discography into a collection of distinct identities, each with its own aesthetic, colors, and associations. But it also makes me think about the role branding plays in music today. At what point does the branding become just as important as the music it's supposed to represent? And how much of an artist's success depends on their ability to create a recognizable identity that people can immediately understand?

I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with branding. Music has always been an industry, and artists have always had to find ways to sell their work. But there's a difference between creating a distinct artistic identity and feeling like every aspect of an artist's career has to be designed with public consumption in mind. When a song needs to be catchy enough to go viral, the lyrics need to be quotable enough to become a trend, and the artist needs an aesthetic recognizable enough to be turned into an online identity, it makes me wonder how much room there is for music that doesn't fit into those expectations. And this brings me back to Sabrina Carpenter, because I don't think her success is simply a matter of Tiktok making a song popular. She's talented, she's been working for years, and she clearly understands how to create good pop music. I think Espresso was the perfect combination of a genuinely catchy song, a memorable visual identity, and the kind of lyrics that people could immediately turn into something of their own. It arrived at the right time, in the right cultural environment, and gave people something they wanted to engage with. But I also think it's interesting that an artist can spend years developing her craft and still be perceived as having appeared out of nowhere simply because the public only starts paying attention once the right song comes along.

So, I guess my bigger question is whether songs need to be written for public consumption and virality to receive the attention they deserve. What happens to the songs with lyrics that are so touchingly written, so painfully specific, that they feel like someone has taken a thought directly out of your head? What happens to the albums that don't necessarily make sense on the first listen, or the artists whose music is more difficult to package into a particular aesthetic? Do they get overlooked because they don't have the right fifteen seconds of music to go viral? I think about how much music exists outside of what becomes popular online, and how many songs I probably haven't heard simply because they never made their way onto my feed. It makes me wonder how much of my own music taste is actually my own, and how much of it has been shaped by what the internet has decided is worth listening to. I started this essay talking about my 2021 music taste, and while I would like to think I've developed a more individual relationship with music since then, I still discover so much of what I listen to through social media. I still get influenced by trends, still get curious about artists because everyone is talking about them, and still occasionally find myself listening to a song simply because I've heard the same fifteen seconds of it a hundred times. And I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. The internet has introduced me to artists I might never have discovered otherwise, and I love being able to share my enthusiasm for music with other people. There's something special about watching a song become a shared cultural experience, especially when it's an artist you've loved for years. But I also think it's worth questioning what we lose when virality becomes such a significant measure of success.

Because if a song needs to become a trend for people to pay attention to it, what happens to the songs that don't? If an artist needs to become a recognizable aesthetic before people take her music seriously, what happens to the music she made before that image existed? And if the internet is increasingly deciding which songs deserve our attention, how many beautiful, brilliant, and genuinely moving songs are we missing simply because nobody has figured out how to turn them into a trend?