As we enter into a new year, many of us are still reeling from 2020 and the baggage and trauma the year brought. To counteract the hardships faced last year, people began to reach for different things to bring them comfort. For some, it meant putting on a cheesy romantic comedy from the 90s or playing a live album by the bands we couldn't see perform. For many, it was choosing to join and use TikTok as a coping mechanism.
The app, which had around 27 million American users in January 2019, soared to over 91 million by June 2020. It might be the best app to lose hours of your life while you aimlessly scroll and watch tutorials on making iced coffee and the plethora of “What Is Your Favourite Celebrity Interview Moment?” clips, but a series of videos have brought a trend that started back in the MySpace days.
Lubalin, a 30-year-old Canadian musician, went viral a couple of weeks ago when he began making light of some overly dramatic but hilarious social media drama by giving them a dramatised and catchy spin by shaping them into songs. In December, Lubalin had 5k followers and now, with the arrival of his third video poking fun at the seriousness of niche drama in a series that Lubalin calls “Turning Random Internet Drama Into Songs,” he is at 2.2 million.
Immediately, TikTok users became enraptured in the series. It is not news that humans live for drama and gossip; we love being nosy and being on the inside of a joke. After seeing people duet with Lubalin's series on TikTok and post about it on Twitter, it seemed like it took over the internet. When the viral videos began being shared by boomers on Facebook, it became apparent that this musical form of light, ridiculous relief that is tying all of us, young and old, together.
There’s comfort in the old & familiar and there are a few reasons why Lubalin’s series feels like something of the past. After a year of isolation and depressing news, we are all reaching for light relief, and what could be lighter than a dramatic retelling of some very bland fights online? In the mid-2000s, when sites like MySpace and old forums thrived, dramatic retellings were incredibly popular, whether it was a reading of a MySpace message, an Evanescence inspired fanfiction, or a YouTube comment. Shared feverishly over bulletins on MySpace was a 2007 video titled ‘Dramatic Reading of a Break-Up Letter’ which has 3.8 million views since being published almost 14 years ago. It’s reminiscent of the time when Weird Al Yankovic and his parody videos were at their peak; a retelling of serious songs, highbrow moments, and pop culture events turned lowbrow, cheeky, and told in a lighthearted, trivial way. Yankovic’s 2006 album ‘Straight Outta Lynwood’ poked fun at the biggest songs of the mid-2000s (like 'American Idiot' by Green Day and 'Ridin' by Chamillionaire), perfecting a blend of parody and musicality that felt significant at the time.
In particular, MySpace was a site that has been remembered fondly as a space that helped shape the careers of independent and unknown artists, with Forbes even hailing it as being the reason why niche genres started and have continued to thrive ever since. It influenced the different ways musicians released and promoted their work, opting to release music independently and garner a fanbase before a label even entered the picture. Like MySpace, TikTok thrives on engagement; if people like what you're doing, they'll let you know by liking, commenting, and, in Lubalin's case, follow you to consume more.
The fans eventually become the signifier of what is cool and trending, something prominent with artists on TikTok who, like Lubalin, become immensely popular just by posting a video at the right moment. Although what Lubalin did wasn't new when compared to the dramatic retellings of the mid-2000s, he tied a trend from the past to a current moment where we are aching for some carefree, contextless drama that doesn’t require any direct personal connection to the drama itself. It’s the water cooler gossip we haven’t been able to have, the gigs we haven’t been able to attend, the nostalgia found & felt through a funny trend or meme, all wrapped in one short video.
After struggling with how to promote his professional music, it’s only fitting that Lubalin would find his big break on the new way for independent artists to be discovered. In addition to his professional music, let's hope he keeps turning shameless Internet drama into theatrical songs. We have room for both in 2021.
