DIARY OF A TREND: Say So by Doja Cat
Unless you have been living under a rock for the past 3 years, chances are you have heard the name Doja Cat in conversation. Since releasing “MOOO!” in 2018 as a joke, Doja Cat (born Amala Ratna Zandile Dlamini) has seen immense success as a breakout popstar on the charts, both domestically and internationally. With 5 platinum records and 7 gold records, as well as 57.6 monthly listeners, she has garnered immense success catering to a young audience with catchy beats and memorable lyrics. This is part of the reason that Doja has become TikTok’s unofficial star.
TikTok, unlike other social media platforms, is centered around sounds. As Abidin and Valdovinos Kaye (2021) put it, “‘Audio memes’ popularized by TikTok have become the next frontier of meme cultures on the internet, presenting an ‘aural turn’ in meme ecologies.” Unlike previous iterations of online trends, these audio memes required considerable foresight and a level of intelligence on behalf of the viewer in order to allow for its dissemination. Some trends are purely lip-syncing, some have a dance portion, while others require a combination of lip-syncing and acting in order to advance a joke. Aside from music, there are plenty of audio memes that are the creation of users. These various levels of depth to memes, with no warning before the video begins as you scroll, is potentially the reason why older generations (such as that of my parents) have some difficulty before grasping the central concepts to TikTok.
TikTok has seen immense success due to the structure of its interface. Unlike other platforms, one does not have to create an account to view videos on the app, which allows it to be quite successful in reeling in apprehensive users. Then, while on the app, one does not have to follow another user in order to view and discover content. The “For You” page suggests an endless scroll of curated content, leading to a unique algorithm that creates a stickiness to the platform that other social media still lacks. In 2021, statistics revealed that users spent an average of 32 minutes on TikTok, second only to Facebook which is made more impressive by the fact that the app was only launched in 2017. Each video takes up nearly the entire screen, with a bar at the bottom to indicate the origin of the sound.
Valdivinos Kaye, Rodriguez, Langton, and Wikstrom (2021) categorized sounds on TikTok into 4 categories, two of which include proper attribution and two of which include misattribution. There exists original sounds made by TikTok users, sounds that are attributed to artists through TikTok’s automatic attribution system, sounds that are incorrectly attributed to artists through TikTok’s automatic attribution system, and sounds that go undetected by TikTok’s automatic attribution system. In the case of Doja Cat, the automatic attribution has worked quite well, as upon clicking on her account and scrolling to her music tab (specific to the profiles of artists), you will see millions of videos have used her songs.
Now that we have established the basic mechanisms behind TikTok, it is time we use this lens to analyze Doja Cat and her song “Say So”. While Doja Cat had success prior to TikTok, such as her SoundCloud career that garnered her a record deal, it was ultimately the app that thrust her into stardom. The release of her sophomore album, Hot Pink, saw moderate success with initial singles “Juicy,” “Bottom Bitch,” and “Cyber Sex” all seeing positive reviews. The album was released on November 7, 2019 but it wasn’t until mid-December that Doja went viral.
Virality, as defined by Valdivinos Kaye (2020), is the process by which content circulates rapidly and spills over into other social platforms and mainstream media. In the music industry, we can think of viral in terms of viewers to a music video or streaming statistics. On TikTok, virality can be measured in the number of videos using a specific audio. Enter Haley Sharpe (@yodelinghaley) and her video where she dances to the album record “Say So” for the first time. Her fun and easy-to-learn dance led to the video blowing up, with 7.4 million views and countless users giving it a try. It was easy to find, as it was the most popular video under the “Say So” audio on the app and the song was just remarkably catchy, leading plenty of viewers to rewatch the dance video over and over.
The dance trend was suddenly everywhere, dominating the “For You” page and finding its way onto other social media platforms. In just a month’s time, the label decided to release “Say So” as an additional single due to the overwhelming popularity of the song online. Soon, it became her first and only #1 on the Billboard charts, largely due to TikTok and Haley Sharpe. In an effort to repay her, Doja Cat included her and the famous dance in the music video for “Say So”.
This is what makes this TikTok trend quite rare in comparison to others of similar success. We can understand the relationship between artists/corporate labels and users through the lens of strategies and tactics (de Certeau, 1980). Labels release songs in hopes that they become successful and drive more listeners to their artists while maintaining sole possession of the revenue and influence generated as a result. This can be understood as the main strategy of the labels. In turn, users aim to use the song however they please, whether it be in a dance or just using a snippet of the song out of context. Due to TikTok being based around audio and not specific accounts or hashtags (though they exist as part of the interface), users have generated tactics to claim credit for their contributions to trends and the success of specific artists. Frequently, users will add dc: @user in their caption in order to give credit to the individual who created a specific trend.
This has not always been the case, however. One of TikTok’s first major trends was a dance to the song “Lottery” by K.Camp. The dance was everywhere and became known as “The Renegade.” Though Jalaiah Harmon, a 14 year old girl from Atlanta, was the original creator of the dance, she received no credit from the litany of TikTok influencers who rode the trend to amass huge followings on the app. While Addison Rae was on Jimmy Fallon to show off various dances, Jalaiah did not get the same treatment. Nevertheless, TikTok has forced labels to become far more collaborationist (Jenkins, 2006) than they were before. If success is user-driven, then it only makes sense that users are at the center of the promotional efforts, while also receiving credit and ownership for their work.
In the end, this serves as one of TikTok’s great success stories for everyone involved. Doja Cat’s album went gold and was featured in the top 40 of a number of countries. Her follow up album, Planet Her, went on to have greater success and garnered 8 nominations for the upcoming Grammy’s. Haley Sharpe has continued to make dance trends while garnering 3.6 million followers and 205.2 million likes. Her dance aided in “Say So” becoming one of the most used audios of all time, with 12.6 million videos attributed to the hit song.
