Sad Girls on TikTok: Musical and Multimodal Participatory Practices as Affective Negotiations of Ordinary Feelings and Knowledges in Online Music Cultures

ABSTRACT

This article examines musical participatory practices on TikTok as mediations of ordinary feelings and knowledges. It conducts a multimodal analysis of user-generated videos that recirculated the song “Complex” by Scottish singer-songwriter Katie Gregson-MacLeod, which became widely successful on the app in 2022. Through its features and sociotechnical affordances, TikTok fosters feminine-coded articulations of intimate affects and negotiations of ordinary feelings and knowledges that have been marginalized in popular music cultures. Its intersecting algorithmic logics and human practices also create new rules about what affective sensibilities are foregrounded and how they are circulated through multimodal and memetic participatory practices.

KEYWORDS:

• Popular music
• online media
• gender
• affect
• TikTok

Introduction

In August 2022, the 22-year-old Scottish singer-songwriter Katie Gregson-MacLeod posted a one-minute section of her new song “Complex” on the short video app TikTok. The video shows a close-up of the singer in a red sweatshirt, singing and swaying with the movement of playing a piano placed beyond the frame. Moving through repeated descending melodic contours, Gregson-MacLeod’s vocal performance is somber but steadfast as she narrates the heartbreak associated with the experience of hiding intense emotions from a boyfriend who fails to recognize or reciprocate these feelings. By the end of August, the video had been viewed almost seven million times (Caramanica) and TikTokers had posted thousands of videos in which they repurposed parts of the original video to share their emotive reactions, identified phrases they most resonated with, or performed their own vocal renditions with rewritten lyrics that centered personal experiences of sadness, heartbreak, and vulnerability.

In this article, I examine how these technologically mediated musical and multimodal participatory practices on TikTok work as affective negotiations of ordinary feelings and knowledges surrounding affective gendered subjectivity and intimate relations in digital popular music and media cultures. I build on Kathleen Stewart’s conceptualization of ordinary affects as public feelings that are at once broadly circulated and privately felt (2) and on feminist theorizations of affect as a way of understanding how personal lives intersect with structures of power (Berlant, Cruel; Ahmed, “Affective Economies”; Ahmed, Promise; Ngai; Cvetkovich; Sedgwick). I ask how meaning and knowledge are negotiated through TikTokers’ uses of the app’s original sound and duet features; what experiences of personal and romantic relationships are positioned as central and peripheral in these practices; and how these musical participatory practices and knowledge cultures are mediated by the sociotechnical affordances of TikTok. To answer these questions, I bring together research on TikTok, affect, and (young) female subjectivity in popular music and digital media cultures.

TikTok is increasingly recognized as a central platform in popular music culture, particularly for young female singer-songwriters, who connect with their audiences through the app (Rauchberg). TikTok has also informed new forms of creativity and multimodal participatory practices that renegotiate the boundaries of musical production and consumption (Kaye; Vizcaíno-Verdú et al.; Vizcaíno-Verdú and Abidin; Kaye et al.). Incipient research further suggests that young TikTok users routinely address mental health, depression, and trauma (Cheng Stahl and Literat) and experience TikTok as an intimate and safe space (Şot). These findings resonate with recent research that suggests that vulnerability, sadness, and related affects have become normalized in presentations of female subjectivity in digital popular music and media culture (Thelandersson, 21^st Century).

My analysis focuses on two core features of TikTok’s user interface that center sound and music: original sound, which enables TikTok users to isolate the audio track of an existing video and use it as a score for new multimodal content, and duet, which allows users to record sound (and multimodal content) in synchronicity with existing audiovisual content and displays videos alongside each other as a split screen. My material consists of the respective one hundred most-liked videos in which TikTokers have used the app’s original sound and duet features to repurpose “Complex,” including through reaction videos, lip-syncing, and TikTok users’ own vocal renditions of the song. Combining methods of content, auditory, and multimodal discourse analysis, I identify three focal points in affective negotiations of ordinary feelings and knowledges in the recirculation of “Complex”: first, I discuss negotiations of postfeminist subjectivity through the figure of the “cool girl” in videos that use TikTok’s original sound feature. Second, I examine how TikTok users employ the duet feature to negotiate multifaceted perspectives and experiences in their own vocal renditions. Finally, I discuss how TikTokers negotiate the boundaries of their intimate digital publics and claim the centrality of female and feminine experiences in discussions surrounding videos that center male points of view. Along these central themes, I analyze how TikTok’s sound features are characterized by multimodal and affective similarities and differences that variously remediate earlier musical and multimodal forms in popular music and digital media culture and afford divergent negotiations of meaning and knowledges.

Affective Female Subjectivities, TikTok’s Participatory Practices, and Formations of Selves in Digital Popular Music and Media Cultures

Girlhood has been theorized as a liminal formation of subjectivity that is associated with emotivity, passivity, and objectification (Driscoll). It is, therefore, considered to be doubly marginalized in opposition to (white, straight, cis, able-bodied) men and in opposition to adult women (Huzjak 2). Further, intersections of gender and age with race and class have informed divergent race- and class-based figurations of the girl (Harris). In popular music cultures, discursive formations surrounding girlhood have resulted in the marginalization of girls and young women in music production and performance and reinforced the dominant cultural imagining of girls as consumers. Modes of consumption like record collection that have been associated with (white) men and masculinity (Bannister) have been considered as valuable practices and forms of knowledge formation in popular music culture. In contrast, the tastes, fan practices, and musical knowledge cultures of girls and women have been discredited due to their association with emotivity (Dibben 124) and the association of consumption with femininity and mass culture (Huyssen). This has resulted in the twofold marginalization of girls’ and young women’s practices and knowledges in musical (sub)cultures and subcultural studies (McRobbie and Garber).

Against this backdrop, feminist studies of fandom in popular music culture have sometimes taken on a strategically essentialist position to highlight girls’ and young women’s music use. However, rather than presupposing gender and other factors of social identity, scholars have studied how women use music for affective constructions of self and formations of identity. For example, Ann Werner has studied how girls, by negotiating musical tastes and practices, also negotiate gender and its intersections with sexuality and ethnicity (Werner, “Sexy Shapes”). In this article, I similarly conceptualize girlhood and young female subjectivity as dynamic formations in online popular music and media culture, where technological affordances and affect mutually mediate each other and the constructions of selves and publics (Papacharissi, Affective Publics). My study is situated at the intersections of recent research on TikTok’s platform features, digitally mediated selves, and affective subjectivity, which I outline below.

Tiktok and Participatory Practices in Digital Music Cultures

TikTok is a digital media app that allows users to create, disseminate, and consume audiovisual content in short video format. TikTok was the most downloaded mobile app worldwide in 2022 (“Leading”) and user numbers are estimated to exceed 830 million in 2023 (“Numbers”). Introduced in 2017, TikTok became increasingly popular in 2018 after its parent company ByteDance acquired the app Musical.ly, which had become popular among users for creating lip-sync videos to existing pop songs. The mediation of music and sound has thus been a central feature of TikTok (Vizcaíno-Verdú and Abidin), beginning with the lip-sync videos and viral dance trends associated with the app in the late 2010s (Boffone). By focalizing participatory practices, TikTok shares characteristics with other digital media platforms like YouTube (McGee; Werner, “Danssteg”) that have been associated with practices of produsage (Bruns) and the formation of participatory cultures in the context of online media (Burgess and Green; Jenkins et al.; Jenkins).

Simultaneously, TikTok’s platform features foster unique user practices and interactions associated with the short video format (Kaye) that bridge production and consumption (Vizcaíno-Verdú et al.). For example, TikTok users have employed the app’s original sound feature, which allows users to isolate and repurpose audio tracks, to remediate earlier forms of protest music (Sadler), and center the experiences of marginalized groups (Vizcaíno-Verdú and Aguaded). Sound and music are on TikTok often used in “audio memes,” where they interact with image and text in multimodal forms of storytelling (Abidin; Vizcaíno-Verdú and Abidin). Like memetic practices more broadly, these uses of sound and music center imitation and collectivity (Zulli and Zulli). Recent research has also discussed how TikTok’s duet feature, which allows users to record new audiovisual content in synchronicity with existing material and displays both videos as a split screen, has facilitated collaborative music making during the COVID-19 pandemic (Kaye).

Affective and Algorithmic Mediations of Selves and Collectivities

By engaging in participatory digital media practices, TikTok users construct, negotiate, and understand selves and collectives. For Zizi Papacharissi, networked selves and publics are structured by affects, while the characteristics of media technologies in turn enable certain affective processes that may structure or dissolve publics (Papacharissi, Affective Publics 24). Aparajita Bhandari and Sara Bhimo have developed previous theorizations of “networked selves” (boyd; boyd and Baym) in the context of TikTok and offer the concept of the “algorithmized self” (Bhandari and Bimo), which describes users’ continuous self-reflective engagement with algorithmic mediations of themselves, and İrem Şot (1492) concludes that TikTok users’ perception of the platform’s algorithms as highly individualized technologies inform their experiences of the app as an intimate and safe space. Thus, the interactions between TikTok users and algorithms form “infrastructures of feeling” (Coleman) that facilitate the formation of affective (digital) intimate publics (Berlant, Cruel; Berlant, Female Complaint; Kanai, “Girlfriendship”).

Sad Affect and (Young) Female Subjectivity in Popular Music and Media Cultures

Digital popular music and media culture has recently been associated with the increasing foregrounding of sad affects in presentations of female subjectivity, where articulations of positivity have given way to negotiations of sadness, mental illness, and trauma (Thelandersson, 21^st Century 2). In this context, the figure of the “sad girl” has been used to describe various articulations of sadness and negative affects in digital media culture (Mooney; Thelandersson, “Social Media”). In popular music culture, the figure was initially used to describe the work of Lana Del Rey and the foregrounding of a sad and apathetic female persona that differed from postfeminist articulations of empowerment and independence that were commonplace in pop music of the early twenty-first century (Mooney; Thelandersson, “Social Media”). More recently, the term “sad girl pop” has in popular writing been applied to the work of young female musicians like Phoebe Bridgers, Mitski, and Billie Eilish (Lauletta; Garcia-Furtado), and some emergent female singer-songwriters on TikTok (Caramanica).

While these different uses of the “sad girl” figure illustrate the range of articulations of sadness from individualized to societal struggles, negotiations of sadness and related affects are jointly understood as situated against the backdrop of postfeminist subjectivity (Thelandersson, 21^st Century 2), which has been theorized as a gendered formation of idealized neoliberal subjectivity (Gill and Scharff; Gill; Tasker and Negra; McRobbie). Postfeminism constructs women as individualized neoliberal subjects, who engage in continuous yet hidden processes of self-surveillance and self-discipline (Gill), including the management of mental health, and the maintenance of happiness and confidence (Banet-Weiser; Orgad and Gill). For Thelandersson, the increased visibility of sadness in contemporary media culture delimits a complex affective landscape against the backdrop of postfeminism, in which formations of “sanctioned” vulnerability exist alongside other negotiations of sadness that more readily acknowledge the role of structural inequality in mental health and illness (Thelandersson, 21^st Century 21).

In this article, I bring together these research perspectives to analyze what gendered formations of subjectivity emerge as central and peripheral in these practices, where boundaries are drawn in the intimate digital public surrounding “Complex,” and how these processes are mediated by the affordances of TikTok’s audio features.

Material and Method

I chose to study TikTok given its introduction of new multimodal creative and collaborative practices through features like original sound and duet, its wide popularity among young people and particularly young women, and its association with effects of intimacy. Katie Gregson-MacLeod’s song “Complex” was selected as a case study that illustrates these characteristics: the song resonated stylistically with the work of other young female singer-songwriters who initially became popular on TikTok and other online media sites; it became an overnight success and was widely circulated among (predominantly young, female) TikTok users; and it was variously repurposed through multimodal participatory practices that foregrounded sadness, insecurity, and vulnerability. Katie Gregson-MacLeod originally uploaded a one-minute section of “Complex” on 4 August 2022. In the following days, the video was widely shared, and TikTokers used the app’s original sound feature to share emotional reactions to Gregson-MacLeod’s song, point out phrases they most identified with, and relate the lyrics to personal experiences. Some TikTokers, including some female singers who had become widely popular on the app, uploaded their own cover versions or vocal renditions in which they had rewritten the lyrics. Reacting to these renditions, Gregson-MacLeod uploaded an instrumental version of “Complex” on August 8 and invited TikTok users to post their own vocal renditions alongside her piano backing track, using the app’s duet feature (Caramanica). My material consisted of the one hundred respective most-liked videos in which TikTok users repurposed “Complex” by using the app’s original sound and duet features.

TikTok’s user interface centers on the For You Page (FYP), which displays an endless succession of video content to its users. The interface also includes a button for recording or uploading audiovisual content and incorporates a variety of features that allow users to easily repurpose, recontextualize, or build on (parts of) previous videos. TikTok’s original sound feature enables users to isolate audio tracks of previous audiovisual content and to repurpose them as scores for their own videos. Audio tracks can either be added directly, by tapping the “use this sound” button when watching a video, or at a later stage, by choosing the “save to favorites” option. Videos typically juxtapose preexisting sounds or music with visual imagery and, in the analyzed material, many TikTokers used text overlays as additional modes of communication. TikTok’s duet feature allows users to create videos that use the audio tracks of previous videos as a point of departure and record an additional new audio track, presenting both videos alongside each other as a split screen. While the original sound feature emphasizes multimodality, the duet function primarily centers on the juxtaposition of sound or music from two (or more) videos. Features like original sound and duet are platform affordances (Nagy and Neff) that facilitate particular relationships between the materiality of technologies and user practices (Lüders 954). They inform participatory practices that are characterized by modal, tonal, and affective differences, which I will return to in my analysis.

TikTok’s system of tagging previous audio tracks allows users to access all videos that use (and correctly tag) an individual sound. This facilitates the use of features like original sound and duet as methods of data collection. Recontextualized audio tracks are tagged below the caption of videos that use them. When tapping on MacLeod’s audio track, TikTok displays all videos by other users in order of number of likes, with the most popular videos displayed on top. TikTok’s duet feature also uses a tagging system and collects and displays all videos that have created “duets” based on a specific previous video. TikTok’s system of attribution combines automated and manual tagging of audio tracks by users and is, therefore, prone to misattribution (Kaye et al.), but Katie Gregson-MacLeod was widely recognized and known as the audio track’s author in the circulation of “Complex.” I therefore assume that my material of videos by other TikTokers that correctly attribute “Complex” maps the most visible ways in which TikTokers have used the app’s original sound and duet features.

When I collected the material for this study on 8 May 2023, TikTok users had posted 19,400 videos that featured the audio track of Gregson-MacLeod’s original video using the app’s original sound feature and 5,119 “duets” that built on Gregson-MacLeod’s instrumental version. At that point, the most popular video among the original sound videos had received 1.1 million likes, two more videos had been liked over 500,000 times, and the top seventy videos had received over 100,000 likes each. The reach of most of the “duets” was substantially smaller. The most viewed video among the “duets” had been liked roughly 250,000 times and six more videos had been liked more than 100,000 times. Roughly forty percent of the one hundred most liked videos had between 10,000 and 90,000 likes, with the remaining half of the videos having between 2,000 and 10,000 likes. Despite differences in numbers of views and likes between these two collections of material, they are similar in their distribution of likes: in both cases, five to ten videos had been viewed and liked hundreds of thousands of times, while most videos have received a substantially smaller, yet comparatively even, number of likes. Based on this distribution of likes, an analysis of the top one hundred videos in both data sets gives insight into the most visible themes and narrative perspectives in the reception of “Complex.”

I combine methods of content and qualitative analysis to examine the scope of media content and identify nodal points of meaning (Papacharissi, “Without You”) in multimodal material. First, I use content analysis to identify the contents and distributions of themes in the material. I further use auditory music analysis that examines how the interactions of sonic, technological, and extramusical qualities create meaning in recorded popular music (Moore). Given that the auditory material of this article foregrounds vocal performance, I particularly focus on the relationships between voice, lyrics, and instrumental arrangement in these videos. Third, I apply multimodal discourse analysis (MDA) as a tool for examining the meaning-making properties of multimodal settings like digital media culture (O’Halloran) and, specifically, the interactions of sonic, visual, and text-based elements on TikTok. Finally, I contextualize these qualitative tools with relevant metadata including numbers of likes, user data, and dates.

My discussion focuses on broader themes rather than TikTok users’ individual videos and comments, resonating with Zulli and Zulli’s proposition to conceptualize TikTok at large as a memetic text that focalizes imitation and collectives of expression (1886). Following suggestions for best practices in the use of public social and digital media posts in research (Fiesler and Proferes), I have sought to inform the TikTok users whose videos I describe individually to illustrate themes of this research via direct message on the app, giving them the opportunity of opting out. Some TikTok users had disabled messages by users they did not follow, and I was, therefore, not able to contact them. Generally, TikTok users’ posts are situated within an attention economy, where TikTokers actively seek attention and engage in “visibility labor” (Abidin). Nevertheless, in my discussion of examples, I do not use TikTok usernames or handles and do not quote posts verbatim. In the few cases where I identify TikTokers’ gender, I use their self-identifications in captions, posts, or profiles, and, in the case of well-known TikTokers, musicians, and actors, information from Wikipedia or cultural journalism. Rather than focusing on users’ gender identification, I conceptualize gendered subjectivity as a dynamic formation that is negotiated through TikTok users’ participatory practices in relation to discursive formations of (young) female subjectivity like the figure of the “sad girl” delineated above, and the figure of the “cool girl,” which I discuss in my analysis.

Affective Negotiations of Knowledge Through TikTok’s Original Sound and Duet Features

Roughly two thirds of the one hundred most popular videos using TikTok’s original sound address the song’s theme or related subjects including family life, mental health, and abusive relationships. The remaining third of the videos address various topics including celebrity couples, music news, movies, poetry, baking, and pets. While the latter videos do not foreground personal relationships, most address themes of love or relationships at large or use the audio track of “Complex” to amplify a video’s emotive qualities. In many videos that explicitly address personal relationships, TikTokers repurpose short clips of the song’s lyrics they perceived as the most poignant, sad, or reflective of their own experiences, and lyrics are also widely discussed in comment fields. Some people have uploaded reaction videos displaying their own emotive reasponses to listening to the song or rewritten lyrics to center on issues like family relationships and body image. The most common way in which TikTokers have engaged with Gregson-MacLeod’s song in the one hundred most liked original sound videos is by isolating individual phrases in the song’s lyrics to discuss personal experiences. Several lines from Gregson-MacLeod’s lyrics have been quoted and variously repurposed, but the pressure of being a “cool girl” by containing one’s emotions in a romantic relationship is the most referenced line by far, having been addressed in over a quarter of the videos.

The one hundred most liked “duets” are roughly split in half between renditions in which TikTokers sing Gregson-MacLeod’s original lyrics along with the singer’s piano track, and renditions in which people have created their own versions of the song’s lyrics. Most variations address similar themes of unhappy or ending relationships. TikTokers have particularly resonated with Gregson-MacLeod’s depiction of containing and hiding one’s intense emotions from a partner who fails to recognize or even reciprocate these feelings. Ten videos address this theme by depicting similar experiences in relationships with young men. Thirteen videos in the sample address queer experiences, including love triangles as well as gay and lesbian points of view and several of them discuss the theme of contained or hidden feelings tied to experiences of internalized homophobia and hidden queer, gay, lesbian, or bisexual desire, or trans identity. Another thirteen videos take on a specific position in relationship to Gregson-MacLeod’s original lyrics, like the best friend, the older self, or the boyfriend implied in the lyrics. In nine videos, TikTokers have modified the song’s lyrics and theme of emotional neglect toward (emotionally) abusive relationships with romantic partners or parents. The remaining ten videos include satirical variations of lyrics and videos that satirize “male point of view” videos, which I return to below. Like the original sound videos, these “duets” have also been widely liked, shared, and saved. And while most of these videos’ reach has been smaller in scale (half of the videos had received between 2,000 and 10,000 likes), TikTokers have avidly engaged with the videos by posting affirmative comments. TikTokers’ “duets” are thus mainly characterized by reiterations of Gregson-MacLeod’s original narrative and subtle modifications, with satirical versions of male points of view and discussions surrounding this perspective being an exception to these qualities.

Below, I discuss three central themes I identified in my analysis. First, I analyze negotiations of the “cool girl” figure, vulnerability, and memetic qualities in videos that use TikTok’s original sound feature. Second, I examine subtle variations of lyrics and the multiplication of perspectives in “duets.” Finally, I investigate TikTokers’ demarcations of boundaries through discussions surrounding the “male point of view” videos. I discuss how contents and multimodal qualities are mediated by the affordances of TikTok’s original sound and duet features and situated in relationship to discourses of affective (female) subjectivity.

Not Being a “Cool Girl”: TikTok’s Original Sound Feature, Memetic Practices, and Vulnerability

In more than a quarter of videos using the app’s original sound function, TikTokers have discussed the pressure of being a “cool girl” by containing and hiding one’s emotions, primarily in the context of romantic relationships with (young) men. In many videos, TikTokers have isolated Gregson-MacLeod’s phrase “I’m being a cool girl/I’m keeping it so tight” to create multimodal posts that are just a few seconds long. Typically, Gregson-MacLeod’s audio track is superimposed with video footage of the TikTokers in various poses (like lip-syncing, striking a pose, or looking contemplative) and text overlays, in which people explain their personal associations with the lyrics. TikTokers have used this template to address the pressures associated with the need to contain their emotions or to explain why they don’t identify with the idea of “being the cool girl,” for example by feeling insecure in their romantic relationships and displaying sadness, vulnerability, and related feelings “too” openly. The “cool girl” is thereby constructed as a postfeminist figure, where vulnerability and insecurity are to be hidden behind displays of confidence (Banet-Weiser).

In just under a third of videos, TikTokers apply the “cool girl” trope to issues other than romantic relationships, like broader experiences of insecurity and anxiety, friendship relationships, and sexual health. Some videos and comment fields have become spaces where TikTokers more readily problematize the concept of the “cool girl” and its relationship to normative gendered behavior. For example, one person uses an extended text overlay to delineate the experience of trying to embody the “cool girl” by containing anger and thereby behaving differently from their boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend. In a widely liked comment, a TikTok user ties this experience to the realization of the “crazy ex-girlfriend” trope as a sexist affective figuration. But most videos associate the figure of the “cool girl” with the experience of attempting to contain one’s emotions in romantic relationships and, in all but one video, TikTokers identify their implied partners as male.

In one popular video, a TikToker uses a clip of Gregson-MacLeod’s lyrics “I cry in his bathroom/he turns off the big light/I’m being a cool girl/I’m keeping it so tight” and superimposes the lyrics with a text overlay that addresses the experience of secretly crying while a male partner sleeps next to them. The video has received over 500,000 likes and 3,500 comments in which TikTokers widely identify with the lyrics and describe them as a “universal experience.” Here, experiences and articulations of sadness are associated with (young) female- or feminine-identified people, and are to be managed individually and hidden behind displays of confidence.

Like several videos by other TikTokers, this video juxtaposes the articulation of vulnerability with a quality of irony as the TikTok user lip-syncs smilingly and strikes a defiant, supposedly “cool” pose in synchronicity with the “cool girl” phrase in Gregson-MacLeod’s lyrics. Thus, while TikTokers articulate vulnerability, sadness, and insecurity, these feelings are positioned at a distance: in many videos, emotionally difficult situations belong to the past, and visual images often foreground irony, humor, and positivity through smiles, thumbs-up gestures, or defiant poses. These depictions resonate with the use of irony and (self-deprecating) humor in memes, which have been described as ways to perform relatable selves (Kanai, Gender; Ask and Abidin). The videos thus articulate a “sanctioned” vulnerability that balances relatability with neoliberal and postfeminist tenets of confidence and resilience (Thelandersson, 21^st Century 8). These articulations tie in with the affective sensibilities of TikTok that value relatability and differ from other online and social media contexts like Instagram that center constructions of perfection in the presentation of young female subjectivity (Camacho-Miñano and Gray).

Further, several videos are markedly similar in format, tone, style, and contents, illustrating how TikTok is characterized by memetic qualities that focalize imitation (Zulli and Zulli). By mediating similarities in experiences through similarities in affect, TikTokers have used the original sound feature to create a digital intimate public that emphasizes affective belonging and sameness (Kanai, “Girlfriendship”) around dis/identifications with affective figurations of female- and feminine-coded subjectivity. Many videos are also characterized by similarities in age and visual constructions of gender as most TikTokers look young and many share feminine appearances. Affective belonging is also built through comments, in which TikTok users widely affirm each other’s personal experiences and which resonate with recent research that has concluded that TikTok users experience TikTok as a platform that fosters intimacy and feelings of safety (Şot).

While these videos are based on and link back to Gregson-MacLeod’s audio track, “Complex” is here fragmented and decontextualized to a sound bite of a few seconds that becomes but one element in a complex multimodal meme. This use of music is predicated on its sonic format, where sound and lyrics are repurposed to communicate meaning in combination with visual text and image. In the next section, I discuss how memetic practices also inform the TikTokers’ uses of the app’s duet feature. However, the feature also remediates earlier forms of song and facilitates different participatory practices and negotiations of feelings and knowledges that center on participatory singing and songwriting practices.

Reverberations, Subtle Variations, and Multiple Perspectives in TikTok’s Duet Feature

In videos that use TikTok’s duet feature, TikTokers have recirculated and modified “Complex” by singing along to Gregson-MacLeod’s piano accompaniment of the instrumental version uploaded on 8 August 2022. These participatory practices are characterized by subtle negotiations of sameness and variation. In almost half of the videos, TikTokers sing Gregson-MacLeod’s original lyrics and largely follow the original’s melodic and rhythmic contours. Most of these performances also broadly resonate with the sonic and affective qualities of the original performance as vocal performances are largely subdued and emotive, lacking displays of vocal ornamentation. Like the original sound videos, many videos are also characterized by broader gender- and age-based similarities and some of the most-liked “duets” are created by other female-identified musicians, actors, and content creators in their teens and early twenties, who have built large followings on TikTok.

Some people preface their videos with proclamations that they are not singers but were inspired to record “duets” because the song’s lyrics resonated with them. For example, a well-known young female actor explains in her caption that she does not usually sing but that she was inspired to do so by her identification with the song’s narrative. Singing is here constructed as an authentic and affective practice that is directly tied to the articulation of emotions. Throughout music history, these discursive constructions have coded singing as a bodily and feminine musical activity (Dibben 122).

The vocal renditions vary in pitch and timing accuracy, but most videos by well-known singers and self-proclaimed non-singers similarly foreground soft vocal qualities, emotiveness, and casualness. For example, another popular young female singer, who has one million followers on TikTok, sings while lying in bed, in a soft vibrato voice and a relaxed diction that positions accents loosely to Gregson-MacLeod’s piano score. By reverberating with Gregson-MacLeod’s lyrics, melody, vocal and emotive qualities, these “duets” construct sameness through text-based, musical, and affective similarity. In these ways, the “duets” resonate with the original sound videos discussed above, which similarly construct sameness through memetic qualities.

In the remaining share of videos, TikTokers have added new lyrics to Gregson-MacLeod’s original song to narrate various experiences of unhappy relationships. Most of these renditions also closely resemble Gregson-MacLeod’s original melody, verse form, and rhythm as well as the vocal qualities described above. Most lyrics also resonate with the original theme and, with a few exceptions, the videos narrate experiences of unhappy romantic relationships. Nevertheless, singers have variously carved out nuances in points of view through subtle changes in lyrics. For example, TikTokers have variously rewritten Gregson-MacLeod’s opening line, “I’m wearing his boxers,” to encompass queer relationships and identities. One TikToker develops the line to “I’m wearing his boxers, she’s wearing my t-shirt” to center the perspective of a woman in a hidden love triangle with a woman and a man. As she explains in her text overlay, she situates her lyrics in the context of compulsory heterosexuality and internalized homophobia. Other TikTok users similarly modify the opening line to frame gendered items of clothing, bodily form, or dysmorphia and thereby articulate their experiences of relationships and broader identity-related experiences from various lesbian, gay, bisexual, undisclosed queer, and trans identities. In these renditions, TikTokers use the app’s duet feature in ways that multiply perspectives through subtle variations, while many retain the sonic, rhythmic, and affective qualities of Gregson-MacLeod’s original song and video.

TikTok’s original sound and duet features illustrate how participatory practices on TikTok strongly build on the use of sound and are characterized by memetic qualities, where individual posts are mutually referential and form collaborative practices. However, despite these similarities, my material also points to the divergent participatory practices and affective qualities that these features inform. Whereas the original sound is primarily used to create complex multimodal texts characterized by fast pace, brevity, and irony, “duets” more readily remediate earlier forms of song in popular music culture. Conceptually, “duets” that feature modified lyrics are situated between cover songs and original performances. Cover songs have been theorized in popular music as musical forms that afford the renegotiation of meaning through intertextuality. But whereas the ability of cover songs to “create a dialogue” between the two (or more) artists rests on the recognition of the original (Fast 220), TikTok’s duet feature renders intertextuality explicit by way of technological mediation: displayed as split screens, “duets” become “transmedia” forms of storytelling at the intersections of image, audio, and text (Vizcaíno-Verdú and Abidin) that are explicitly connected to other users’ posts and perspectives.

Unlike the original sound videos, the “duets” are rarely characterized by irony, and most vocal performances share a quality of vulnerability and heightened emotivity. These differences are also related to modal differences between these features, where the juxtaposition of audio, image, and text in original sound videos resonates with the multimodal, humorous, and fast-paced qualities of memes. In contrast, videos that foregrounded singing more readily articulated affects of sincerity and earnestness. These affects are further emphasized by the visual qualities of most videos, where TikTokers are frequently shown through close-up shots in dimly lit, often private, surroundings. Thereby, “duets” resonate with the increasing visibility of bedroom pop in the context of online music cultures (Roos) and the broader relocation of (girls’) bedroom culture online, where previously private negotiations of emotions and experiences are relocated to an online public domain (Avdeeff). While the intimate public surrounding TikTokers’ “duets” is mostly characterized by mutual affirmation, some videos and comment fields point at the potential boundaries of this space. These discussions center on videos that present a male point of view, which I discuss in the final part of my analysis.

Demarcations of Boundaries and “Algorithmic Imaginaries” in a Digital Intimate Public

Some male singers have used TikTok’s duet feature to center the perspective of the boyfriend implied in Gregson-MacLeod’s lyrics. In a widely liked video, a male singer depicts the male protagonist as somebody who fails to commit to a romantic relationship due to drug addiction. This singer’s version shares the emotive quality of most other “duets” and, like the examples discussed above, he modifies central lines in the lyrics, including the mirroring of “I need him like water” with “she needs me like water.” TikTok users that have employed the duet feature to center male points of view have used the platform to remediate a specific subgenre within the tradition of answer songs in popular music (Cooper), where singers articulate the perspectives of (former) partners, who are implied or addressed in a previous song. Like other popular “duets,” the singer’s video has received several hundred comments, most of which are appreciative of his performance and the perspectives of his lyrics. But videos that centered a male point of view have also been discussed critically.

The male singer’s “duet” prompted another TikToker to use the duet feature to create a split-screen video of themselves alongside the singer’s performance to initiate a discussion surrounding male point of view renditions of “Complex.” In numerous comments, TikTok users argue that the duet feature inherently invites modifications of lyrics, that male point of view videos have helped them to better understand some of their past experiences in relationships with men, or, simply, that art should be free. But most commenters are more critical of videos that center a male perspective and argue that these videos diminish the song’s original, female- or feminine-identified point of view.

Discussions surrounding the validity of videos that center a male point of view have also been addressed in satirical versions. One female singer variously modifies Gregson-MacLeod’s lines to narrate the perspective of a boyfriend who positions himself as “a good guy” and thinks of himself as being “so complex,” while fundamentally misunderstanding and neglecting the needs of his partner. In many comments, people commend the singer on accurately satirizing lyrics in male-perspective videos they had seen. A critical perspective toward videos that center a male point of view has also been shared by Gregson-MacLeod, who joked in an interview, “Whenever I hear ‘She’s wearing my boxers,’ I’m like, ‘No’ … Read the room, man” (Caramanica). Gregson-MacLeod’s proverbial “room” implies the digital intimate public that has formed around “Complex,” which has primarily centered the point of view of a female or feminine person who feels emotionally neglected in a romantic relationship, mostly with a man. In her appeal, Gregson-MacLeod points to the boundaries of this space, and her sentiment is widely shared by commentors, who have equally claimed ownership of “Complex” and the ordinary feelings and affective gendered knowledges they understand as central to the song. These discussions surrounding the validity of male perspectives are situated against the backdrop of gendered discourse surrounding narrative authority, where girls and young women, in particular, have been depicted as unreliable “narrators of their own stories” (Huzjak 3), not least when these narrations foreground emotivity.

Some TikTok users who were critical of videos that centered male points of view explained in comments that they had been surprised that such videos had appeared on their algorithmically curated For You Page. These comments illustrate how TikTok users participate in formations of self in negotiation with automated systems, where digital intimate publics are also mediated by algorithmic recommendations (Bhandari and Bimo). TikTokers’ surprised reactions illustrate their “algorithmic imaginaries” (Bucher), that is, users’ ideas and expectations of what these algorithmic systems are and how they work. These imaginaries articulate high levels of expectations in relation to TikTok’s imagined algorithms; they are not only expected to present TikTok users with content that is thematically interesting, like videos that are based on Gregson-MacLeod’s original video, but to present content that resonates with a particular point of view in relationship to the original song’s narrative. TikTokers’ reactions show how affective belonging is not only constructed through TikTokers’ memetic participatory practices but also (expected to be) strengthened by the logics of its algorithms.

Conclusions

Recent research has concluded that TikTok has become an increasingly powerful media platform in the career of young female singer-songwriters (Rauchberg), has informed new participatory and collaborative practices that center sound and music (Kaye; Vizcaíno-Verdú and Abidin; Vizcaíno-Verdú et al.), and is characterized by articulations of vulnerability (Cheng Stahl and Literat) and experiences of intimacy (Şot). In this article, I have brought together these perspectives through a case study of primarily young, female- and feminine-identified people and their wide recirculation of the work of a young female singer-songwriter.

By widely watching, liking, sharing, and repurposing “Complex,” TikTokers have mobilized literacies in the platform’s tacit conventions and meaning-making potentials. They have asserted and affirmed each other’s ordinary feelings and musical and multimodal knowledges and expertise, which are primarily constructed as female or feminine-identified, and have engaged in demarcations of boundaries in digital intimate publics. As I have discussed, these processes are mutually mediated by the sociotechnical and affective dimensions of TikTok’s platform features. My analysis shows that participatory practices that center sound and music on TikTok are strongly characterized by memetic qualities that foreground imitation and collective negotiations of meaning (Zulli and Zulli). Thus, the sociotechnical characteristics of TikTok’s sound features foster processes of knowledge formation that are citational and intertextual, constructing a distributed form of knowledge different from assertions of authority, individuality, and originality that have been associated with the figure of the male (music) expert.

The qualities of TikTok’s original sound feature have informed negotiations of the “cool girl” figure in multimodal memes, in which qualities of irony and self-deprecating humor contribute to constructions of a “sanctioned” form of vulnerability (Thelandersson, 21^st Century 8) that balances postfeminist tenets of confidence with relatability (Kanai, Gender), which is valued in the context of TikTok. Thus, the memetic quality of TikTok’s original sound feature fosters affective, narrative, and multimodal similarities and creates new “feeling rules” that structure affective belonging through sameness (Kanai, “Girlfriendship”).

In contrast, videos that use TikTok’s duet feature foreground singing, are longer, and are characterized by sonic and visual affects of intimacy and earnestness. “Duets” thus more readily remediate traditional forms of song, and discourses of singing as bodily and affective musical activity, which has been coded feminine throughout music history. In turn, technological mediation renders “Duets” explicitly intertextual as the split-screen view places each vocal rendition in relationship to Gregson-MacLeod’s performance and resonates with the remediation of (girls’) bedroom culture, where previously private negotiations of feelings are relocated to digital publics in the context of online media culture (Avdeeff). As I have discussed, the boundaries of these publics have been demarcated through TikTokers’ discussions of “male point of view” videos and are (expected to be) co-constructed by algorithmic curation. Through its features and sociotechnical affordances, TikTok fosters feminine-coded articulations of intimate affects and negotiations of ordinary feelings and knowledges that have been marginalized in popular music cultures. Its intersecting algorithmic logics and human practices also create new rules about what affective sensibilities are foregrounded and how they are circulated through multimodal and memetic participatory practices.

Acknowledgments

I thank Bethany Klein and Mimi Haddon for their editorial work and for bringing together scholars with a shared interest in girls’ musical participatory practices and knowledge cultures, and Kristine Ask and Ann Werner for useful comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Swedish Research Council under “International Postdoc” Grant no. 2020-06449 and was conducted during a research stay at the Department of Musicology, University of Oslo.

Notes on contributors

Veronika Muchitsch

Veronika Muchitsch is a postdoctoral research fellow at Södertörn University, Stockholm. Her work is situated at the intersections of popular music, gender, and digital media studies. In her ongoing research, she studies how the interwoven automated and human processes of algorithmic music and media technologies mediate music, meaning, and constructions of subjectivity in online popular music cultures.