Female Musicians, TikTok & the Mechanical Reproduction of Art
How Tiktok as a platform contributes to the misunderstanding of art created by complex women for the sake of a reproducible, viral moment.
Yumnu Adnan
Whether we’re obsessively finding reasons to defame them or fangirling over their latest paparazzi photos—we as a culture are fascinated by female musicians. We are fascinated by their artistry, their personal lives and their ability to captivate their audience with their star power. From dubbing Ice Spice' the new people’s princess’ to creating a spectacle out of Amy Winehouse’s suffering, it is undeniable that in every decade-from alternative to pop—the mythos of the female artist has captured the zeitgeist in an unprecedented manner. In particular, we participate in their ritualistic shaming, placing them on a pedestal only to bring them down repeatedly.
I am fascinated by the way social media has influenced how audiences engage with their work. The platform most notorious for its relentless bastardization of these women is TikTok. On the app, you often witness artists' music used as audio content for memes and trends. One notable example of this phenomenon was when Mitski's song ‘Strawberry Blonde’ started trending as ‘Strawberry Cow’. It's common to have trends on TikTok that go out of style quickly as they arrive (as is the case with the internet); however, on this app in particular, there's a pattern of trends that miss the original intent of the music they play around with.
The detachment of an artist’s work from its meaning also occurred when people began calling themselves ‘femcels’ after listening to Fiona Apple. While the definition of femcel originally meant 'women who are involuntarily celibate', the term has evolved to mean any woman who dares to be unconventional and complicated. One scroll through #femcel on TikTok, and it's clear that the identity is taken up by women who consider themselves manipulators. They dub themselves Amy Dunne worshippers and aficionados of heroin chic tired of female pleasantry. It would be remiss not to mention the Venn diagram of femcels, TERFs, and the obsession with white femininity.
An example of femcel gone mainstream is a scene in Girl Interrupted (1999) where Angelina Jolie's character verbally abuses a victim of incest which became a trend in 2022. ‘Everybody knows. Everybody knows he fucks you’, she says in a harrowing moment, cruelly sadistic in her words. She is, at that moment, referring to the girl's father and the sexual abuse he has subjected her to. This TikTok trend transformed this scene into a 'gotcha' trend used to make fun of others or brag about their sexual conquests. It later turned into quirky girl merchandise for Depop sellers. Now not only was this scene commodified, but it was used as internet points to brag about one’s superiority and ridicule others. The superiority complex and the mockery of women align with femcel ideologies, where Jolie’s cruelty is seen as aspirational.
Seeing femcels associate with an artist known for her incredible vulnerability, like Fiona Apple, is disturbing as has not once considered herself as a femcel. When impressionable girls on TikTok attach this identity to her, it takes away from her autonomy as an artist. It misconstrues her message and distorts the way people perceive her work. Her song 'Sullen Girl', a haunting depiction of the aftermath of her rape, became the soundbite of the season for TikToks of girls who fancied themselves as female manipulators.
To have a song about a profoundly traumatic experience used in this manner is harrowing. So it’s not surprising that she made the decision to remove her songs from the platform. Fiona Apple has spent decades of her career being called angry and ungrateful—she doesn’t need more of it from the internet. During her infamous 1997 MTV Speech, Fiona Apple said, "The world is bullshit and you shouldn't model your life about what you think that we think is cool". It was brilliant for its candid honesty about how we shouldn't idolise celebrities. While many revere Fiona's insight now, she was dubbed bratty and ungrateful at the time. According to Fiona, the speech was an act of defiance from the media, making her out to be something that she wasn't. Unfortunately, time is repeating itself, with TikTok recreating its version of the same misunderstanding she endured decades ago.
Women's pain is something that, even after centuries of ‘progress’, has never been taken seriously. It is a devastating revelation that one goes through. This is especially true for trans/ gender non-conforming women and women of colour, who find themselves at the margins of society, which leads to them facing the brunt of this prejudice. While it can be easy to be annoyed at the people creating these TikToks, I do not think placing the blame entirely on them is productive.
TikTok centres around the consumption of short-form media in rapid succession, with each video only capable of containing a 30- 60 second song excerpt. Regardless, 30-60 seconds is not enough time to capture the essence of a song, let alone understand the artist's intent. In Walter Benjamin's seminal text 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction', he talks about how 'the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility'. In this context, he is talking about how the work of art produced is created to be reproduced easily to generate mass copies. This is a familiar refrain, especially in today's world, where art is so commodified and often made with the sole goal of mass production.
While it's incredible that technology has made music more accessible, it has also fundamentally changed how we consume it. The experience of listening to music became divorced from its communal origins to an experience you can have in isolation alone in your room with your collection of records. As analog media evolved into digital streaming, the songs became further divorced from how music used to be consumed-listening to one song instead of the entire album has become more commonplace. Now, with the advent of TikTok, a song itself is dissected into clips—these 30-60 seconds become separate from the whole song. This means that new meanings can be assigned to a song which can be entirely disconnected from the original work. It doesn’t help that record labels are further enabling this to happen by forcing artists to market themselves on the app. Pop star Halsey has stated that her label refuses to release any of her new material unless it is accompanied by a campaign to make the song go viral. Musicians can no longer just create music. They are now expected to be full-time social media managers on top of the gruelling hours they spend creating their art and touring the country.
Viral out-of-context TikTok sounds and songs function as marketing opportunities for advertisers to commodify our experiences in new and increasingly frustrating ways. The commodification of women stems from the patriarchal world that profits from the globalised exploitation of women. TikTok, by design, exemplifies the biases that pre-exist in our society and makes it ten times worse. This was shown by the whole Hailey Bieber vs Selena Gomez debacle of 2023. Many brands, including Duolingo, jumped onto the trend of dogpiling Hailey Bieber under the guise of ‘restorative justice’. ‘I’m not saying she deserved it, but god’s timing is always right’ was the audio snippet that sneered at Hailey as the viral videos migrated onto every social media platform. Brands lampooning Tiktok’s villain of the month comes as no surprise, as it has only been a year since the Milani Makeup brand went on the platform to capitalise off from the mass humiliation of Amber Heard by “disproving” the fact that she used their product to cover up her domestic assault injuries.
Music turns from creative expression to another way marketers can capture our fried attention. The recent development of brands collaborating with musicians with the sole purpose of creating songs for TikTok shows just how far our neoliberal culture would go to sell us more products. Prominent pop star Chloe Bailey has collaborated with Mondelēz brand Trident and launched a song with the intention of it becoming a trend on TikTok. It is disheartening to see an art form that collectively unites people be used solely for engagement on social media.
I do not want to be the old man wagging my finger and complaining about how kids do not understand music these days. I believe that most young people are not ill-intentioned and are not willfully misunderstanding works of art. It is clear that while we cannot negate individual responsibility, the very design of TikTok as a platform allows these art misconstructions to exist in the first place. Female musicians are a demographic who undeniably deal with a lot of harassment and misunderstanding. It is sad to see their work be received this way. I appreciate how TikTok has democratised music and allowed independent artists to obtain commercial success. However, I cannot help but wonder how musicians must feel to see their raw vulnerability take on forms beyond their intention.
Ultimately, maybe all we can do is be active and attentive listeners. See the performers live, buy their records and listen to their albums in full. To be attentive is an act of love. To truly love our favourite artists, we must put in the effort to understand what they have to say.
