Artists like Lizzo, Dua Lipa, and Polo G have expertly harnessed TikTok to push their songs up the Hot 100, and two years ago Jason Derulo essentially created a hit out of a TikTok meme. Just Google the name of any recent hit followed by “tiktok,” and you’ll inevitably find a slew of homemade clips soundtracked by that hit. Frontline artists’ new music is held up by their label until it goes viral on TikTok. Explosive growth in “time spent listening” by the average American-up a whopping 28 percent just in the first half of this year, even after big gains over the past half-decade-is, Billboard reports, due largely to TikTok. Even though TikTok views do not count directly toward the Hot 100, there’s ample evidence that the music business has become the TikTok business. ‘Bad Habits’ is out now via Asylum Records UK.For the past few years, I could reasonably have retitled this Slate series “How Did TikTok Get This Song to No. 1?” Since 2019, when Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” ran roughshod over the charts, it’s been assumed that most if not all hits blow up thanks to the music-steeped social microvideo site (which, back in 2018, grew out of the now-defunct lip-sync-selfie site Musical.ly, whose song-syncing engine lives on in TikTok’s DNA). But I suppose it isn’t the main point of pop music to be innovative or risk-taking.Īs much as I may moan about how my personal and self-entitled fantasy of Ed Sheeran doing a purely acoustic or heavy metal or Latvian folk album isn’t being met, I do think ‘Bad Habits’ is a well-written song, and it will satisfy its purpose of getting maximum airplay and pleasing the masses perfectly adequately. As such, a Google search reveals at least four other songs with the name ‘Bad Habits’, songs that will now be usurped in the algorithms by this piece regardless of whether they deserve it. I just wish Sheeran had added a personal twist, and made some effort to sound different, instead of sounding like another carbon copy. I know there is no such thing as an original idea, and that immature pop musicians borrow while mature pop musicians steal. Well, apart from a big video starring Sheeran as a vampire, which seems to have got more attention and interest than the actual song itself. Ed Sheeran without his guitar is like a dog without a bone, especially as there’s nothing to replace the guitar in this song. Heavy synth production is not only unsuited to Sheeran’s musical aesthetic it is also not what people recognise and listen to him for. It’s as though Sheeran heard last year’s excellent Róisín Machine (or, as Alexis Petridis suspected in his review for the Guardian, The Weeknd’s After Hours) and has intended to blindly copy it, rather than sophisticatedly apply it to what he does. But for the most part the song sounds, production-wise, like a budget Róisín Murphy. I am particularly keen on the song’s opening refrain, with an atmosphere partially reminiscent of The Cure‘s ‘Lullaby’, and Sheeran’s “hoo-ooh, hoo-oooooh” vocal hook running over the top. The lyrics feel equally generic and perfunctory, with no clear relevance to his real-life experiences.ĭon’t get me wrong, ‘Bad Habits’ is a fine pop song. Not only is ‘Bad Habits’ heavily synth-based to the point of ostracising Sheeran’s acoustic guitar – his unique selling point and most distinctive feature – but when I first heard it, Sheeran’s voice seemed unrecognisable. I could see this working if Sheeran was to take inspiration from, say, Robert Fripp or Tin Machine, but not Daft Punk. This in itself is fine and admirable as a way of avoiding stale artistic complacency, but only truly works when the finished product, while being different and surprising, still sounds recognisably like the artist in question. So I wanted to go in the studio and make something that was totally different.” “People see me as the acoustic singer-songwriter who does ballads and there was just a lot of that. The main headline here is that Ed Sheeran has attempted to reinvent himself – “I always aim to push myself and my music in new directions and hopefully you’ll hear that on the new single,” he said while promoting the single. ‘Bad Habits’ leaves me with mixed views – mainly because it doesn’t sound a lot like the Ed Sheeran we know and love at all. But on top of all this, he is working on the follow-up to 2017’s internationally successful, if overplayed, Divide album, as teased with the arrival of this new song, entitled ‘Bad Habits’. I thought he would be too busy spending time with his family and managing other artists such as Maisie Peters on his Gingerbread record label. The announcement of a new Ed Sheeran single took me somewhat by surprise. Should I praise this single for its understanding of mainstream pop consumers' tastes, or condemn it for its inoffensive conformity (and lack of philosophical stimulation)?
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