A video posted by a TikTok user was enough to dust off a song that is more than ten years old: “Bloody Mary”, the eighth title of Lady Gaga’s album Born This Way. In 2011 it was not released as a single, then going unnoticed by the general public. Yet it is precisely this music that has just found success on the platform, thanks to an edited video in which Wednesday – the character of the series of the same name directed by Tim Burton and broadcast on Netflix – dances to an accelerated version of Bloody Mary.
Like Kim Kardashian with her 9-year-old daughter, everyone is now trying this dance, which has become a new element of pop culture. And from this buzz, of which TikTok has the secret, the counters panic over Lady Gaga’s song. More than 2 million listens have been counted on Spotify. The title also became the most searched title on Shazam. The icing on the cake, the radios have decided to broadcast it on their antennas.
“That’s one of the big positives of TikTok — some old songs can get back on the charts due to sheer organic success,” says content creator and music industry observer Khal Ali. “Just one edit, one video and the song goes viral. We’ve had plenty of such examples. What happened with Kate Bush’s “Running Up that Hill” was pretty crazy. It’s a nearly forty year old song that still managed to make it back to number one on the charts!”
An (almost) obligatory step for artists
The viral power of TikTok is indisputable. For artists, existing on this social network seems to be a must. Sometimes, in spite of themselves, they have to adapt to the game of this platform which has more than a billion users. “I do not do it…
