A few months ago the producer Shaving, the Argentine creator of “viral songs” – those that expand at a devilish speed -, said in a conference organized by ‘Billboard’ magazine that he never thinks about TikTok when he composes. But yes, once the subject is finished, the seconds that can circulate virulently on the social video network are very clear. TikTok, turned into the great catalyst of musicis where artists have to be (or are forced to be) to promote their work. Singers, producers and record labels know it.
Rosalía masters the tool, plays with it naturally and successfully, as has happened in his latest single with the anticipation generated through the release of hooks in the form of short fragments of the theme. In fact, social networks and their music have come to be intertwined, for example in the ‘Motomami’ tour, where the influence of TikTok and Instagram in their aesthetics was evident.
“She really is one millenarian but he has a lot of behavior [generació] Z in networks. What if ‘Finstagram’ [tenir un compte b a la xarxa social], that if you use TikTok 24/7… It’s how you have to be now if you want to reach people”, says Janira Planes, director of communication at Wuolah and specialist in internet culture. By Planes, Rosalía has been able to play very well with key elements in the digital universe cwho are the“authenticity and even the performativity that TikTok claims and the language of the current internet”.
“Jesus” on the web
Thus, using personal material on social networks, raw, without prior cooking in any image studio, is one of the tricks. These tricks, it should be noted, are topped off with his music, which is what ends up sustaining everything. Planes makes a celestial comparison and metaphor. “Beyoncé maintains the strategy of being like God: the most beautiful, photos taken with a super camera… On the other hand, Rosalía is, following religious terms, like Jesus. Close to the people, she responds to people, she interacts… It works very well for her because she is an artist who is being built in real time». Planes emphasizes that, beyond what her team can help her with, “it’s very noticeable when an artist wears their networks, as Lil Nas X also does”.
After the concerts, he has republished a new song, entitled ‘LLYLM’ (an acronym for ‘Lie Like You Love Me’, “lie to me as if you love me”) and for which TikTok has once again been key in the promotion The Catalan, who always leads the communication of her work above her label, on January 9 he released 24 seconds of the new track which turned out to be the comeback. These 24 seconds (in English) generated all kinds of comments. Some said it was a possible collaboration with Dua Lipa and even claimed that they felt it in their hearts. fantasy What is true is that it has been a long time since Rosalía released a song in English and the last one was the version of ‘Blinding lights’ with The Weeknd in 2020. Before the release of ‘LLYLM’ there have been a couple of more videos on TikTok: A week and 24 hours before its release, with a new bit of the song.
But in the end it turns out that it is a solo and bilingual subject (Spanish and English) that for part of the letter (‘I come by motorcycle, I’m a mommy’) is intuited to have been composed during the creation of ‘Motomami’. What has also helped the interest these days is the union of ‘LLYLM’ with Coca-Cola, a visible gesture on the social networks of the artist, who tagged the company in some posts. It turns out that the ‘single’ will be part of a global campaign for the drink, but there is still no information to reveal.
In any case, the game of releasing a ‘teaser’ and later another and then another for the fan’s (and, mind you, detractor’s) slurp on the net had already been done with hits like ‘Hentai’ and ‘Despechá’ The most paradigmatic example of all this is, precisely, ‘Hentai’ and the bottles that raise its obvious sexual message disguised as a certain infantilization. “He knew how to play well, launch a ‘teaser’ with a part that can be discussed… On TikTok it works very well because there are the typical people who are very visceral, who have a lot of hatred, and other people who say: ‘is the song of my life’. This polarization, which is very common on TikTok, for the songs and for making these ‘teasers’ and playing with virality… It makes it one of the best platforms to do it, if not the best at the moment”, considers Planes . Creating expectations is easy; the hard part is fulfilling them. And Rosalía meets both parties.