.jpg)
In TikTok Report, we look at the good, the bad, and the straight-up bizarre songs spreading across the platform via dances and memes.
David Lynch was onto something when he posted up on Hollywood Boulevard with a live cow and a large sign that read “FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION: LAURA DERN.” This was 2006, and since then Laura Dern has done an inconceivable amount for the culture. Sure, she redefined maternal rage on Big Little Lies and single-parented four sterling feminists in Little Women. But arguably more legendary was when she crashed her daughter’s TikTok dance to Doja Cat’s “Say So” late last year—and totally crushed it. I woke up to the world-historic Laura Dern “Say So” video on my Twitter feed, after misguidedly taking a two-week TikTok hiatus to “read.” Dern lunges into the choreo the way an anemic person might a juicy steak.
Even without boosts from Oscar-winning actresses and their daughters, the triumph of Doja Cat’s “Say So” has been so overwhelming that it almost needs no introduction. The song’s remix featuring Nicki Minaj hit No. 1 on the Hot 100 last week, after the original had been lounging in the Top 10 since the end of March. But the initial traction of “Say So” is mostly attributable to a Huntsville, Alabama teenager named Haley Sharpe, who, in early December, debuted a short dance set to the breathy chorus. It was cute, simple, and had a sense of humor. At the end of the line “didn’t even notice,” she knocked her head twice with the inside of her wrist, as if to say “duh, I’m stupid.”
In some ways, the “Say So” choreo catalyzed TikTok’s transformation into a dance powerhouse. The 15-second clip encouraged skeptical newbies (like me) to try out a dance, while the minute-long version, posted weeks later, challenged people to experiment with more elaborate moves. There are now over 20 million clips set to the “Say So” chorus—and another 3 million set to the rapped second verse, thanks to a different dance challenge. Doja magnanimously repaid Sharpe with a two-second cameo in the official video, much like Marie Antoinette throwing a peasant a morsel of cake.
“Say So” was a real turning point for Doja Cat’s career. It’s also the highlight of her astonishing, unprecedented TikTok reign. Though she only joined the app in late February 2020, at least eight of her songs have generated enough buzz to be considered viral. Even snippets of her unreleased music make the rounds on TikTok, like the recent “N*ggas Ain’t Shit,” in which she snaps, “That’s not cheating if I wasn’t with your ass.” Though there are elements of Doja’s music that make her well-suited for the app, what’s most striking is that her rise from one-time curiosity to bona fide star over the last 21 months mirrors—and was amplified by—TikTok’s own shift from quirky novelty to mainstream publicity engine. Without this serendipitous timing, she might not have hit No. 1.
Doja Cat was born, in the public eye, as a meme. In August 2018, following the uneventful release of her debut album, Amala, she dropped the ridiculous, bovine-themed single “Mooo!.” In the corresponding music video, she deadpans “bitch, I’m a cow” in front of bouncing anime titties, shakes her ass, and shoves french fries up her nostrils; for a generation that grew up online, her goofy, internet-y personality is refreshing in contrast to the calculated posture of normal celebrities. But shortly after “Mooo!” went viral, internet users resurfaced Doja’s old homophobic tweets, and she was promptly “milkshake duck”-ed.
In late 2018, while Doja Cat was still reeling from her so-called cancellation, Haley Sharpe downloaded TikTok. This was the app’s prehistoric age—several months before Michael Pelchat would upload “Old Town Road” to the platform, and almost a year before Jalaiah Harmon would invent the Renegade dance. “It was cringey—there was a lot of weird stuff on there,” Sharpe recalls over the phone. Chipmunk melodies, Fortnite dances, ironic “duets” mocking other people’s content. TikTok slowly became tamer and more earnest, but various online subcultures—the gamers, the cosplayers, the e-girls—still heavily shaped what it would become. “It was definitely more like weirder kids and underground music,” Sharpe says of TikTok before the “popular” kids flooded the app with dances.
Within that interim period, in January 2019, Doja Cat released her first post-“Mooo!” single, “Tia Tamera,” a deliciously absurd hip-hop song comparing her boobs to ’90s sitcom faves Tia and Tamera Mowry. The song’s sinister and theatrical production, as well as its brazen retorts—“Do you know who the fuck you’re talking to?”—fit in with the weirder, queerer ethos of earlier TikTok; many cosplayers used the track in their videos. (Discovery-wise, it also helped that the song was a collaboration with punk-rap sweetheart Rico Nasty, whose ardent alt-girl fanbase likely flocked to the single.) A “Tia Tamera” dance emerged in late March 2019, from the TikTok creator Ian Drewery. It’s a portal into an entirely different world: Relative to the frantic choreo of today, Drewery’s moves are so relaxed, they almost pass for sign language. “Tia Tamera” was one of the first TikTok dances Haley Sharpe learned. “I think that one sort of started the culture of TikTok dances,” she says. “They just looked so good doing the movements.”
In August 2019, Doja Cat released a remix of “Juicy,” the “butt song” to “Tia Tamera”’s “booby song.” Along with the sultry Amala track “Candy,” “Juicy” began trending as part of dance challenges on TikTok. Still, many people didn’t fully register Doja Cat as a star. “The first big song that I actually knew was Doja Cat was ‘Say So,’” says 16-year-old TikTok celeb Madi Monroe. “I’ve been making TikToks to some of her old music for a while now, and I didn’t even know it was Doja Cat.”
“Say So” came out in November 2019 as a part of Hot Pink, Doja Cat’s second studio album. Coming from such a zany, free-spirited personality, the album can feel disappointingly smoothed-down. (The disgraced hitmaker Dr. Luke produced several songs, including “Say So,” under the pseudonym Tyson Trax.) As I mentioned in my dissection of TikTok hits last year, the sonic signatures of the app around the time of Hot Pink’s release included fried, bass-heavy beats, overt video game samples, and abrasive screaming—i.e. a completely different palette than this album’s.
Hot Pink might have not seemed friendly to TikTok, but TikTok increasingly warmed to Hot Pink. As the app went fully mainstream in the latter half of 2019, the influence of e-boys and other weirdos diminished. An ascendant class of dancer-influencers began to dominate TikTok, culminating in the formation of the influencer-collective Hype House in December. The most popular personalities were almost all women. “My best friend Charli [D’Amelio] started making her own dances up to all these songs by female artists. And when Charli does a trend, everyone tries to do it,” says Monroe, who created a viral dance to Doja Cat’s “Like That.” Doja’s softer, girlier aesthetic offered an alternative to the vulgar, brutish rap that previously soundtracked the platform. And her brash, confident lyrics—similar to those of fellow TikTok favorites Megan Thee Stallion and Flo Milli—offer snippets of female empowerment.
While the disco-kissed “Say So” may not be stereotypically TikTok-y by past standards, its tactile qualities make it conducive to dance trends. Doja Cat’s playful delivery helps keep dancers on rhythm, even in the absence of a bass-heavy beat. When you recite her lyrics, like with Shakespeare’s verses, it’s easy to detect the stressed and unstressed syllables: DI-dn’t E-ven No-tice. Then there’s a matter of instrumentation. In a recent episode of the podcast “Switched on Pop,” Charlie Harding notes that the guitar in “Say So” isn’t “laying out the harmony as much as its filling in a kind of percussion”; the alternating chord strum and chuck adds an additional layer of syncopation. Above all is Doja’s versatility, the fact that she can switch between rapping and singing, giving TikTok users many different snippets to choose from.
Now, with the flood of brand partnerships and influencer mansions on TikTok, it can feel like everyone has a ring light and a surgically enhanced ass. Lots has changed since Haley Sharpe first joined the platform over a year and a half ago. Instead of surfacing new, unexpected sounds, users are more concerned with guaranteeing their own “hype” by reaching for what’s already popular to generate trends. And chief among what’s popular right now is Doja Cat. “If you were to do dances to some underground artist, I feel like your dances won’t do as well,” Monroe says. “But everybody knows Doja right now and everybody loves her.”
