What does it take to be a successful musician? Is it years of training? Is it a deep understanding of melody, rhythm and composition? Is it a fierce dedication to the craft despite all of the struggles involved in competing in the music industry?
Nope! Now with TikTok, you can become a famous singer by looking pretty and moving your arms awkwardly to a five-second audio clip Is this opportunity accessible to everyone? Absolutely not! Once again, you must be conventionally attractive according to Western beauty standards to go from a social media influencer to an undeservedly popular singer.
All jokes aside, I never cease to find the pipeline path ridiculous, from its lack of authenticity and true talent to the way it prioritizes the already privileged. Individual influencers may in fact be lovely people, but this model disregards their actual personality for an illusionary capitalist dream of success in both social media and music.
Take artists (I physically cringe calling them artists) like Dixie D’Amelio, Huddy or Addison Rae who have risen to fame after launching their careers on TikTok. They have massive fanbases across many social media platforms that will support them no matter what they choose to pursue. This doesn’t mean they have the qualifications to pursue what they want and yet, despite having much less talent than so many other actual singer-songwriters on the app, they are automatically sent on their way to follow their childhood dream of being a superstar.
Huddy sings about being a vampire and Addison sings about being obsessed with herself. As you can tell, there is a lot of truly high-quality material when you have random famous teenagers intensely pursuing music careers.
Dixie seems like a genuinely sweet person but I have doubts as to whether that should give her a free pass to try her hand at music (releasing eight singles and then a full-length album in the very brief span of barely two years) or at acting (her show, Attaway General Hospital is a definite do-not-watch).
It feels like watching a seven-year-old decide they want to do horseback riding, but then they don’t like it so they try dance instead, which turns into an obsession for doing musical theatre even though they’re good at dancing, but not singing. All the while, the parents sit back and watch admiringly, complying with the child’s every desire. Dixie is a seven-year-old. Her online supporters and managers are submissive parents. Because who cares about quality if she ultimately makes the big bucks?
I admit that I’m being harsh. Some influencers do end up having significant skills and passion and some are also the exception in not being born into privilege. Bella Poarch, a 25-year-old Filipino and U.S. Navy Veteran influencer from an abusive adopted family has created the most-liked video on TikTok and has also started a successful music career. As I said, she’s an exception to the type of influencer that typically gains stardom (the white and wealthy), not the rule.
However, there needs to be an acknowledgement of the excessive privilege that allows most social media personalities to find such automatic success without much effort. The TikTok star-to-musician pipeline is a trend now and likely will be for years to come, but that does not mean other regular, actually talented human beings on social media platforms should be consequently ignored. We must question why certain people get the opportunities they do and then pay attention to everyone else instead.
Or we could all just decide that we’re pop idol material and purposely release terrible music about being vampires and narcissists. Follow your heart, I guess.