It’s fascinating to me that Zuck is such a mark for his own companies’ preferred blend of slop. Of course he loves Benson Boone, just like he has broccoli hair and a chain now, and like he has a caesar cut and dabbled in MMA a few years ago. You can actually *see* him riding the trends thrown up by the algorithm he built in near real time, I guess because he basically doesn’t have a personality otherwise. This is true of Elon Musk too, although that’s a little different because Musk only got into social media because he was already a hopeless Twitter addict.
Anyway, RE: FYP-core, barring hospital gowns and fatigues nobody in any of those videos is wearing any colour other than white, black, grey, beige or light brown, except the kid in a blue vest and some very mild dusty pink in one or two places. Their home decor matches. This is generally west-coasty, but I think it also reflects how state of the art content is approaching perfection. I think FYP music is replacing drugstore music because influencers are adopting the aesthetic experience of shopping at your town’s nicest Wallgreen’s. No personality that might demand a viewer form an opinion, just the general desireability that might cause you to spend $1 more on the good shampoo. Soaring Lorem Ipsum rock is perfect for that: big feelings that are extremely vaugue about what’s being felt about.
I totally agree with what you're saying about Zuck, except I wonder if "mark" is the right word—often feels like he has weekly meetings with a data analytics team about feedslop aesthetic preferences that he then adopts to seem "relatable."
Re: the West-ification of culture, you should watch some of the Netflix show Dream Home Makeover, which is half home reno show and half Mormon lifestyle porn. My wife and I were fascinated by it because it’s some of the most “Mountain Standard Time” content you’ll ever see
How did you make it all the way through this article without mentioning Creed? Can you imagine how much they would dominate this space if they were 25 years younger?
Creed also in the same "ambiguously religious but with clear stench of wack Christian contemporary music" category as most of the cultural output in this post
As a recovering punk and hardcore kid, I have off-and-on listened to a podcast called Axe to Grind, THE hardcore podcast, on which there is a lot of inside-baseball working musician talk. They've been talking about this tiktok-core for a few years. It seems this hookification isn't limited to Imagine Dragon's progeny, there are also lots bands who play what is called "emo" in the mainstream these days who follow this same formula. I think the terse way to put it is that they're not song-first artists, they're TikTok/Reel-first. Which, in my opinion, is one instance of the art/content divide.
FYP-core and setup/punchline facilitating music is a great way to put it!
I don’t know about you but I find the anthemic retail music increasingly jarring as well near comical when experienced in the wild now. It seems like someone hit the wrong button on the playlist and the tunes feel both naked without the digital context elements we’ve come to associate them with and memetic (as in why is the soundtrack to my rigatoni search a bombastic Jack Harlow song?)
You also bring up a good point highlighting how these FYP songs are used on the apps often to drive home a specific point on-screen. Whereas in prior periods this one-two punch interplay was primarily the lane of commercials, and resulted in a check for an artist (think black keys song in a car commercial) the new benefit now on the apps is is exposure, the potential for virality, familiarity when your song gets used as context .
Surely, there is a cost when music fades more into the background in our lives and on the apps it is at such a heavy clip… but who pays the price? TikTok doesn’t even pay royalties for example based on video views- its by video uses. Imagine if Super Bowl ads did the same?
And to hopefully come full circle and put a positive spin, one of the things I really like about Substack is how it puts the power back in artists hands- a platform where we can show not tell that art is valuable, worth paying for, and isn’t just fodder for ‘main character energy’ reels
(Though please continue to use our music there every bit helps)
i do believe the only way we can break free of mormon adult contemporary music is by bringing back christian rock that actually goes hard, by which i mean evanescence and early paramore. nothing had me praising the lord i don't believe in during middle school like them!
Reminds me that last week my son (7) looked up from his spotify account and said "my favorite song is 'royalty-free ukelele type beat'"
LOL
https://open.spotify.com/album/3BGAADUYUvvgfXICGnlS6B
Just listened to this and it has done me irreparable psychic harm. Like if Elsagate was a song.
Re: Imagine Dragons my fave description I think I've ever seen was "music that makes your cousin join the army"
🎯
It’s fascinating to me that Zuck is such a mark for his own companies’ preferred blend of slop. Of course he loves Benson Boone, just like he has broccoli hair and a chain now, and like he has a caesar cut and dabbled in MMA a few years ago. You can actually *see* him riding the trends thrown up by the algorithm he built in near real time, I guess because he basically doesn’t have a personality otherwise. This is true of Elon Musk too, although that’s a little different because Musk only got into social media because he was already a hopeless Twitter addict.
Anyway, RE: FYP-core, barring hospital gowns and fatigues nobody in any of those videos is wearing any colour other than white, black, grey, beige or light brown, except the kid in a blue vest and some very mild dusty pink in one or two places. Their home decor matches. This is generally west-coasty, but I think it also reflects how state of the art content is approaching perfection. I think FYP music is replacing drugstore music because influencers are adopting the aesthetic experience of shopping at your town’s nicest Wallgreen’s. No personality that might demand a viewer form an opinion, just the general desireability that might cause you to spend $1 more on the good shampoo. Soaring Lorem Ipsum rock is perfect for that: big feelings that are extremely vaugue about what’s being felt about.
I totally agree with what you're saying about Zuck, except I wonder if "mark" is the right word—often feels like he has weekly meetings with a data analytics team about feedslop aesthetic preferences that he then adopts to seem "relatable."
He is Mark though. That is the correct word.
Yeah, it’s probably not. He does seem more deliberate than that
A rock band that only sings in Lorem Ipsums (Ipsa?) would be great tho
Re: the West-ification of culture, you should watch some of the Netflix show Dream Home Makeover, which is half home reno show and half Mormon lifestyle porn. My wife and I were fascinated by it because it’s some of the most “Mountain Standard Time” content you’ll ever see
Over the last ~25 years HGTV and home-designs shows in general have been a key vector for Westification!
How Canva can pay your mortgage in 2025 is such a great series of words. gonna stew on that one
no mention of his fans being called booners
We need Hennessy Youngman to come back with an FYPcore Bangers mix like he did with CVS bangers many years ago
How did you make it all the way through this article without mentioning Creed? Can you imagine how much they would dominate this space if they were 25 years younger?
Creed also in the same "ambiguously religious but with clear stench of wack Christian contemporary music" category as most of the cultural output in this post
AWOLNATION ft Jewel cover of "Take a Chance on Me" plays thru the final scene of the new bad Amy Schumer movie on Netflix btw
Filmed across the street from my old apartment!
Have you read the Liz Pelly book on Spotify? There's a chapter on how TikTok is changing music streaming in a different way than Spotify is.
No but it's been on my list--god excuse to read.
Just wanted to say thank you for embedding TikToks in a way that I can play it without having to download the app 🫡
To get that jumpsuit backflip energy you really need to kick the Wellbutrin up to 450
Read Max you done did it again. I look forward to seeing FYPcore in Pitchfork reviews by the end of next week.
As a recovering punk and hardcore kid, I have off-and-on listened to a podcast called Axe to Grind, THE hardcore podcast, on which there is a lot of inside-baseball working musician talk. They've been talking about this tiktok-core for a few years. It seems this hookification isn't limited to Imagine Dragon's progeny, there are also lots bands who play what is called "emo" in the mainstream these days who follow this same formula. I think the terse way to put it is that they're not song-first artists, they're TikTok/Reel-first. Which, in my opinion, is one instance of the art/content divide.
This doesn't surprise me at all—if any genre invented the quiet-loud dynamic now perfect for Capcut transitions it's hardcore and emo!!
FYP-core and setup/punchline facilitating music is a great way to put it!
I don’t know about you but I find the anthemic retail music increasingly jarring as well near comical when experienced in the wild now. It seems like someone hit the wrong button on the playlist and the tunes feel both naked without the digital context elements we’ve come to associate them with and memetic (as in why is the soundtrack to my rigatoni search a bombastic Jack Harlow song?)
You also bring up a good point highlighting how these FYP songs are used on the apps often to drive home a specific point on-screen. Whereas in prior periods this one-two punch interplay was primarily the lane of commercials, and resulted in a check for an artist (think black keys song in a car commercial) the new benefit now on the apps is is exposure, the potential for virality, familiarity when your song gets used as context .
Surely, there is a cost when music fades more into the background in our lives and on the apps it is at such a heavy clip… but who pays the price? TikTok doesn’t even pay royalties for example based on video views- its by video uses. Imagine if Super Bowl ads did the same?
And to hopefully come full circle and put a positive spin, one of the things I really like about Substack is how it puts the power back in artists hands- a platform where we can show not tell that art is valuable, worth paying for, and isn’t just fodder for ‘main character energy’ reels
(Though please continue to use our music there every bit helps)
Thanks for the thought provoking piece.
i do believe the only way we can break free of mormon adult contemporary music is by bringing back christian rock that actually goes hard, by which i mean evanescence and early paramore. nothing had me praising the lord i don't believe in during middle school like them!