If you want to know what everyone’s listening to right now, just open up your FYP
My favorite meme right now, if you’d allow me to share it, is the Fetty Wap “Again” on a JBL speaker meme.
It sounds horribly uncool to try to have to explain it, but I have to for those who aren’t as terminally online as I am: It’s a bunch of historical and fictional moments in which a Bluetooth speaker-version of American rapper Fetty Wap’s 2015 hit “Again” is inserted anachronistically. I can’t explain why it’s funny to me—it just is—and it’s funny enough to a million or so people to have the song return to the Billboard Hot 100 nearly a decade later.
What’s the point of all of this, you ask? Well, if you’ve ever wanted to know what everyone (not just young people) are listening to right now, all you have to do is open your TikTok or Facebook/Instagram Reels feed. TikTok and memes have displaced FM radio and music streaming platforms as the dictator of popular music taste. Or at least, what everyone is hearing these days.
@vnxlys Blast that song in a JBL speaker🗣️🙌🏽✨🔥 #fyp #foryoupage #fyppppppppppppppppppppppp #viral #fettywap #againbyfettywap #again #harana #philippines #filipinocore #viraltiktok #viralvideo #unflopme #meme #highschool ♬ again – adrianaaaa
To be clear, this goes for both music and viral audio, but I’m focusing on the former. TikTok and Instagram’s ability to use a video’s original sound has made it easy for any audio—including and especially actual songs—to proliferate into thousands (and maybe millions) more new different videos. When I was growing up, memes used to be purely visual; now TikTok and Reels (and Vine before it) made it possible to add the audio element to an internet joke.
Couple that with the algorithm of the For You Page (FYP) that likes to show you more of the same thing you stayed a little while longer to watch all the way through, and you create the very same effect that led radio stations back in the day to overplay hits like Stephen Speaks’ “Passenger Seat,” among others.
TikTok and Instagram’s ability to use a video’s original sound has made it easy for any audio—including and especially actual songs—to proliferate into thousands (and maybe millions) more new different videos
For example, a couple of months ago, if you were on both TikTok and Instagram, you could not escape Rose and Bruno Mars’s “APT.” because everyone and their literal mom wanted to dance to it on video, and that’s partly why it became such a hit. Then there’s the revival of Naughty Boy and Sam Smith’s “La La La” from 2013 in music video-style user content over the holidays.
I say that this has dictated tastes because I actually did hear a mall playing a playlist of all TikTok-popular songs on their speakers one time, and other people have started complaining on the internet about FM radio stations playing more social media-popular hits. If you don’t get it, if you don’t know why everyone’s suddenly singing a 10-year-old trap song, you probably haven’t been on TikTok.
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But it’s not all annoying, though, I personally find.
The beauty of TikTok dictating a whole online population’s music taste is that every now and then, in addition to pushing catchy new songs, the brain trust tends to unearth some old gems to go with their memes.
Alongside the Fetty Wap resurgence is the recent return of Earth, Wind, and Fire’s 1981 classic “Let’s Groove”—specifically, the breakdown in the middle that the kids are dancing to now. A few years ago, Edison Lighthouse’s “Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)” framed some beautiful expressions of love by people on the internet. Or the revival of Aaliyah and Timbaland’s “Are You That Somebody” for memes around the same time period.
@icm_triplets Hello? #boogie #letsgroove #earthwindandfire #triplets #hello #tiktokban #fyp ♬ original sound – Bri
It goes to show that these platforms, despite catering mostly to Gen Z and now Gen Alpha, don’t necessarily have to alienate older millennials (and older generations) like myself. The same way I’ve now seen lolas step to some Kendrick Lamar and Doechii, I also now see kids and teens sing along and dance to older songs.
TikTok may seem silly at first to someone who doesn’t understand the point (which, by the way, is to simply entertain). I know, because that used to be me five years ago, but now I’ve come to understand that it’s really a great equalizer. If you ever feel like you’re getting out of touch with the rest of the world—and that matters to you—just scroll over to your FYP.
