Remember When Music Wasn't a 15-Second Audition?
I've been thinking about this a lot lately. And it's doing my head in, honestly.
You know what I mean. You open TikTok and every single song sounds the same. Not because they're copying each other — well, some are — but because every artist is writing for the app. They're not writing songs anymore. They're writing hooks. They're writing the 15 seconds that might get you to stop scrolling. The bit that'll get used in a dance trend or a "POV: you're the main character" video.
And look, I'm not gonna sit here and pretend I don't love a good TikTok trend. I've had songs stuck in my head from videos I saw three days ago. I've found proper bangers through the app — stuff I'd never have heard otherwise. But there's a difference between a song finding its way onto TikTok and a song being _built_ for TikTok.
You can hear it. Can't you?
The verses are shorter. The choruses hit in the first 20 seconds. The production is stripped back because a loud, busy mix doesn't work when someone's dancing to it in their bedroom. The lyrics are written to be captions. "I'm that girl." "It's giving..." "Main character energy." It's not poetry. It's a marketing strategy.
My dad played me something the other day — I can't even remember what, one of his old mix CD tracks — and I said "that's a long intro, isn't it?" And he just looked at me. "That's how songs used to start, Georgia. They built up to something."
And he's right. Songs used to take you somewhere. They'd start quiet, build, hit a middle eight, break down, build again. They had _structure_. They had patience. They trusted you to stick around for more than 15 seconds.
Now? If the hook isn't in the first 10 seconds, people swipe. If the chorus doesn't work as a standalone soundbite, it's dead. Artists are writing with the algorithm in mind, not with the song in mind. And I get it — I do. It's how you get heard. It's how you get plays. It's how you pay your rent. But something's been lost.
I remember being a kid and hearing a song on the radio and not knowing what it was called or who sang it, and having to wait. You'd sit through the whole thing, hoping the DJ would say the name at the end. You'd listen to the lyrics and try to remember a line so you could Google it later. The song had to earn your attention. You had to work for it a bit.
Now the song has 15 seconds to earn a follow. And if it doesn't? Gone. Next.
I'm not saying all new music is rubbish. Some of my favourite stuff this year has come from artists who are doing it properly — writing real songs that just happen to also work on the app. But there's a difference between a song that works on TikTok and a song that _is_ a TikTok trend. One of them will still mean something to you in five years. The other one will be a sound you vaguely remember from a dance you saw in 2024.
I don't know. Maybe I'm just getting old. I'm 28, not 80. But I miss when music felt like it was made for _listening_, not for scrolling. When a song could take its time. When you didn't know if you liked it until the second chorus.
The algorithm's not going anywhere. I know that. But I hope somewhere, in someone's bedroom, there's a kid with a guitar writing a song that takes two minutes to get to the good bit. And I hope they don't cut it down for the app.
Some things are worth waiting for.