TikTok took over this week's Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, showing how the app is becoming part of the music industry
- The Billboard Hot 100 is a music industry standard chart that shows the most popular 100 songs in the US.
- The top 10 of the Hot 100 for this week includes numerous songs that have found steady footing on TikTok, including Doja Cat's "Say So" and The Weeknd's "Blinding Lights."
- The number of songs on the chart that are also popular on TikTok is a testament to TikTok and mainstream culture coming closer together, and to TikTok's role in the music industry.
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The Billboard Hot 100 chart for this week is chock-full of TikTok songs. To be clear, that doesn't mean songs that originated from TikTok, Gen Z's short-form video app of preference. Rather, a "TikTok song" is a track that has found viral footing on the app, becoming part of a meme format or dance challenge or simply racking up video views on the app. The music industry has become increasingly focused on singles, and TikTok is setting up to be its next promotional darling.
This week, every single in the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 has found a foothold of some sort on TikTok, whether it's simple general popularity or viral dance challenges. "Blinding Lights" by The Weeknd and "Say So" by Doja Cat have popular dance challenges; "The Box" by Roddy Ricch and "Don't Start Now" by Dua Lipa have taken on more a meme bent (but don't worry — there are dance challenges for both as well). Every other single in the top 10, ranging from Drake's No. 1 "Toosie Slide" to Billie Eilish's No. 10 "Everything I Wanted," has invited some kind of TikTok use, even if it's not quite at the same level as an organic dance challenge like the one associated with "Say So."
Back in February 2019, Duncan Cooper wrote in Pitchfork: "The songs that go viral on TikTok are refreshingly unpredictable — they aren't a simple reflection of streambait pop or what's big on the radio. Sure, a song like Ariana Grande's 'thank u, next' has a million TikTok videos of its own, but that's not what defines the platform." In the year or so since, things have changed a bit. While TikTok has demonstrated its ability to catapult lesser-known artists into the viral mainstream — consider the trajectory of Lizzo's 2017 single "Truth Hurts" netting a Hot 100 No. 1 in 2019 or Lil Nas X's historic "Old Town Road" chart run — tracks that arguably would chart even without the extra bump of TikTok fame are now finding popularity on the app as its culture aligns more and more with the mainstream, and artists are deliberately targeting TikTok as well.
As an example, Drake's historic No. 1 debut this week with "Toosie Slide" (he's now matched with Mariah Carey for most No. 1 Hot 100 debuts) was most likely helped by the fact that the song, which was released April 3, had already amassed more than 500,000 videos on TikTok and came with a built-in dance challenge. In an interview with Complex, Toosie, the eponymous influencer who created the viral dance, said Drake reached out to him to create a dance for the song. Toosie posted a video on TikTok on March 29 featuring the dance ahead of the single's release, and from that point it was history.
That's not to say this week's success of "Toosie Slide" is due solely to TikTok fame — Drake is a prolific enough artist that it's safe to assume the single would have performed well regardless. Still, this week's top 10 is a testament to the idea that TikTok has become not only a litmus test for popular music but also a means to prolong chart runs, and in rare cases, catapult songs to success.
- Read more:
- 21 of the most popular TikTok songs and sounds, and where they came from
- A music producer just explained how to make your song go viral on TikTok
- How Doja Cat harnessed viral moments on YouTube and TikTok to rocket to the top of the Billboard charts