A Viral Fever
Who knew that the Harlem Shake was the bullet that killed the music industry?
In 2013, a song that no one had ever heard of before and no one has heard of since was the most popular song in the United States for five straight weeks. Being eight words long and only a single beat played on loop, “The Harlem Shake” was not your average number one single. But that week, scores of people took the song and created their own edited videos out of it and posted them on YouTube, posing in animal masks, standing in the snow, dancing and thrusting moronically to no consistent rhythm. All those edits created a viral sensation, resulting in the song being heard over 100 million times on YouTube in the space of a week. So huge, in fact, was the response that it made American charts take notice and do something no one anticipated they would ever do: rank songs based on streaming.
And that is the story of how “The Harlem Shake” became your average number one single. Which in turn is also the story of how “The Harlem Shake” and streaming killed the music industry. Stabbing it, cleaning up the mess, and disposing of the body.
Music charts in America, repped for by Billboard magazine’s weekly Billboard Hot 100, represent the “most listened to” songs in the country. Traditionally, a combination of sales plus radio airplay figures into a weekly ranking of the 100 most listened to songs in the country. But, like the Oscars, the charts are really just a measure of popularity rather than quality.
In 2013, streaming was added to the system. This was because, by that point, views for a song off YouTube clips and the number of times it was being played on audio streaming platforms like Spotify, Pandora, and Tidal, were so vast that they were seen as major factors contributing to the song’s success, a factor that couldn’t be overlooked.
After all, why would someone pay upwards of a dollar to buy a song off iTunes when they could just as easily play it on Spotify for free? Or watch the music video on YouTube?
The focus placed on streaming since then has sent sales and radio airplay into a tailspin. But don’t worry, they’re not alone. The quality of music has declined too, due to the increasing importance artists themselves now place on building popularity for their music via streaming platforms. The process of “going viral” has become utterly formulaic: just find a beat that you know everyone likes and run with it. Think “repetitive.” It’s what allows challenges and trends from video sharing apps like TikTok to break through into the mainstream market. Considering that TikTok is a compilation of videos only mere seconds long, it’s vital that the accompanying tune is earworm-y enough to grab your attention.
This reliance on the influence of streaming platforms, in this case, TikTok, the invention that ushered mankind into the Dark Ages, has reduced the attention spans of the general masses. In 2020 alone, 19 songs have ascended to number one on the Hot 100. And that’s only through September. That’s the most number ones in a calendar year since 2006. The extreme rotation between songs displays how quickly interest in one can transfer onto the next. And can you blame them when they all start sounding the same?
An example of how formulaic current music is becoming is embedded within the music itself. Most songs nowadays employ the same “four-chord progression.” A perfect example of that progression would be the opening piano notes of Journey’s 1981 hit, “Don’t Stop Believin’” (aka, the only cover people remember from Glee). This implies that they use the same four chords on loop to form the basic melody for the song. Now that’s not to say the progression hasn’t ever been used in the past.
There are millions of songs using the same four-chord progression because it allows you to create a relatively simple melody that catches on quickly. But big pop songs, songs by artists like Katy Perry, Queen, Whitney Houston, even the aforementioned Journey song, mask the four chords under a deluge of other production and instrumentation, to the point that you can’t tell it’s really only four notes.
However, starting in the late 2010s mainstream music started deriving more influences from R&B and hip-hop, resulting in mostly minimalist beats and bare-bones melodies. As a result, it’s much easier to pick up on where the music starts looping because the four repeating notes stare right back at you. To the discerning ear, it all turns into one big mush. There are only so many combinations you can create with just a four-note pattern. But the minimalism works for the streaming age because it allows the song’s catchy bit to shine through and take over the listening public.
Guess what else used the four-chord progression? “The Harlem Shake.” All you need to do is listen to the first five seconds of the song and stop right there — you’ve heard the entire thing. It’s basically what you imagine a seizure would sound like. It gives Harlem a bad name
It also gave Baauer, the DJ (if you can call him that) who created it, a hit. But he’s just one of several DJs creating several spastic beats every day. It’s hard to stand out when you’re just a statistic, a dish on a revolving smorgasbord of trends that will come and go.
With streaming’s reliance on minimalism comes the demise of grand, cheerful pop songs, songs that make you want to ride around in your convertible and sing along. Even if you’re risking a nasty car crash, you don’t care. Pop represented being upbeat, happy, carefree, like the saccharine delight of “wave your hands in the air like you just don’t care.” And when music isn’t all beat-drops and production value, nowadays it’s more raw, honest, and heartfelt, at least lyrically. But that also gives way to music that is spiteful, painful, depressing, moody, downright grotesque even. All those songs existed before, but they weren’t the biggest songs in the country back then.
I don’t want to hear about your “innermost feelings.” I don’t want to hear about all the dirty laundry you have to air, or your baggage. There’s no more happiness to be found in music anymore. A fist-pump anthem-like “Don’t Stop Believin’” would never have even hit the top 40 if it were released in 2020.
And so, as the music industry slowly makes its way down the river it’s been dumped into, let us mourn. Mourn the CD, mourn the radio. Mourn music that isn’t “savage” or “fire.” And mourn for the little tune that couldn’t, because it got blocked from ever making a dent at radio because a song with eight words and a single beat on loop was going viral.
Light your candles.
