Assuming that you’re an occasional TikTok user, you’ve probably gotten the earworm rhythms of “Chest Pain (I Love)” or “Roommates” stuck in your head. But you may have never heard the name Malcolm Todd — the viral-not-famous standing that many indie artists fall into.
My introduction to Todd involved pressure from my friends and a $50 ticket purchase. In May of 2025, I saw the Wholesome Rockstar Tour at Terminal 5 in New York City. I’ll pull an emphatic image from that night — the opening cords of “Doll” kicking in, and the woman next to me scream-singing so loud her mascara started running (“You can take it all / You can break me open / I’m your little game / You’ve got all your tokens”). To give her credit, I’m pretty sure she transferred some of her passion right over to me.
The Female Audience
If you love music and you don’t identify as a man, I’m sure you can attest to the moment of hearing a lyric so diabolical you have to turn the song off — I still want to gag every time a DJ decides “Blurred Lines” is going to get the dance floor going. And don’t let someone levy valid criticism against 20-year-old John Lennon writing “She was just 17 / You know what I mean” — the classic rock fandom, and music spaces in general, can be as much of a boys’ club as they ever were.
Misogyny is a pervasive force in the music industry. You can’t tell the story of any great name without including it. And sometimes it seems as though you can’t mention it without breaking some unspoken agreement of “coolness” in the music space, as if the acknowledgement of patriarchy is going to directly victimize and desecrate the legacy of The Beatles.
All of this seems to crystallize in a demonization of female audiences. Historically, a male artist who develops his fame through “fangirls” is seen as less legitimate for it. Five Seconds of Summer, for example, came under fire for appearing to distance themselves from a female audience. In a later interview, the band defended their female fans but suggested “parallels between boybands and fangirls used with a negative connotation.” Among their peers and the media, having a predominantly female listening base made them somehow lesser. It meant they didn’t have to be taken as seriously.
The label “boyband” is often condescendingly thrown at male groups who are uplifted by women’s streams: the implication being that if art made by a man connects to women, it must be somehow emasculated. Some level of respectability is lost if young women can understand you just as well as anyone else.
The Wholesome Rockstar
Going back to that moment at Todd’s concert, I wonder if what struck me wasn’t just the passion of the woman singing along, but the openness of the space to that reaction. Todd is self-titled as a “Wholesome Rockstar,” a name both oxymoronic and true. One of his most popular songs, “Earrings,” contains a repeated refrain: “Extra, extra, read all about it / Mac is in his feelings and he can’t get out of it,” a section that fans love to scream at live performances. There’s nothing truer about his discography, as since his first EP at 17, Todd has been nothing but frank about his affliction of emotion. An honesty that sometimes gets him (lovingly) labeled as whiny, but really, who can’t relate to “I need attention now” or “And when you don’t call me back / I guess I just get a little bit sad”?
Todd’s rise to fame seems tied to his refusal to alienate the female portion of his audience and his ability to write lyrics that feel universally young adult, no matter the identification of said young adult. Above all, audiences are drawn to honesty and a catchy beat. Todd isn’t the first rockstar to hit that formula perfectly.
Other Sentimental Rockers
I don’t think it would be fair to discuss emotional lyricism without mentioning The Cure. Take, for example, “Boys Don’t Cry.” Can you name another 1979 song that has the introspection to acknowledge the singer’s failings (“Pushed you too far / Took you for granted”), and then flip it into an almost satirical point about “hiding the tears in my eyes / ‘Cause boys don’t cry”? Without listing every instance, I’ll say that The Cure’s catalogue is emotionally appealing in many ways — the diverse range of their audience doesn’t just come from Robert Smith being an idol.
Other vastly successful names in music boast the same EQ in their discography. Take The Police’s “King of Pain,” for one, and tell me you can’t hear echoes of “I guess I’m always hoping that you’ll end this reign / But it’s my destiny to be the king of pain” in Todd’s albums. Or sit with “No One Is to Blame” by Howard Jones, and say you can’t feel the teenage angst oozing off the record player. That’s not to mention Bowie, Mercury, or Buckley: the emotions found in music are not a failing, but actually the most attractive part of the medium for audiences.
I see Todd as a new installment in a tradition. Further proof that what the vast majority of audiences want, no matter their gender, isn’t a stone-cold artist with a “cool” image. Rather, they want a soul-searching, ruminative singer, much like what listeners are finding in Todd. Someone who has been wronged and wronged, and isn’t afraid to sing about it. Someone who whines about their love life the same way we all do with our closest friends. Honesty is as key to lyrical success as it is to traditional poetry, of course, assuming it’s paired with a great guitar line.