Video creators use it to soundtrack mundane chores, celebrations, emo moments, or odes to their own bad habits. It’s the current sound of the internet (and I don’t mean Lacy’s old band).Ī recent Nylon profile of Lacy’s hit points out that all of those TikToks set to “Bad Habit” don’t seem to follow any challenge, dance craze, theme, or meme. Among improbable Hot 100 chart-toppers, it has the muted charm of Lisa Loeb wandering through an empty apartment, confessing her insecurities in 1994’s “ Stay (I Missed You),” crossed with the radio-be-damned boldness of Childish Gambino’s 2018 shit-stirrer “ This Is America.” Even comparing “Bad Habit” to these antecedents seems wrong-it’s a defiantly 2020s hit that makes the Gambino hit feel like a million hype cycles ago. Mostly, though, I was cheering on Steve Lacy because I cherish his proud weirdness and the very idea of a song this queer (in all senses) becoming a hit. The World’s Greatest Pro Wrestler Has One of the Best Gimmicks in Years The Case for a New Great American Novelist The Arrogance and Incompetence Destroying a Cornerstone of College Sports Indeed, beyond its TikTok success, this cross-genre status is what “Bad Habit” most has in common with “Old Town Road.” Like Lil Nas X’s now-legendary smash-which was country and hip-hop and novelty/comedy and … mostly, just pop-Lacy’s new chart-topper is everything and nothing at once. As ever, I am skeptical by the methodology that leads to these No. 1 placements-at R&B radio, “Habit” has gone no higher than No. 44 at alt-rock stations, No. 45-but it is remarkable that Lacy’s strummy, oddly soulful jam is legitimately racking up enough spins in these formats to chart in the first place. A month ago, Billboard trumpeted the fact that “Bad Habit” became the first song ever to top both its Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs and Hot Rock & Alternative Songs charts. (I’m not sure how anybody dances to this song, but of course there are remixes.) Because the magazine’s major genre charts are really just mini–Hot 100s, “Bad Habit’s” strong overall pop performance means the song is also (nominally) No. 1 in several of these formats. Right now, “Bad Habit” is on more than a half-dozen radio format charts, from R&B/Hip-Hop to Alternative Rock to Adult Pop to even Dance. In real life, Lacy identifies as bisexual, and some listeners have identified a queer longing in “Bad Habit.” But the likelier reason the song-which wasn’t the first single from Lacy’s album Gemini Rights-took off with so many TikTokking Zoomers is the universality of its self-doubt.Īll that goodwill and genre-crossing has served Lacy well, as evidenced by Billboard categorizing him pretty much everywhere. Having belatedly realized his crush object might actually share his affections, he boldly proposes sexual congress in the back of the mall. Lacy’s guileless vocal ranges from emo whine to yearning falsetto, with sweet counterpoint from former The Voice contestant Britanny Fousheé, and the lyrics are the confessions of a hopeless romantic who regrets not speaking up: “I bite my tongue, it’s a bad habit.” Lacy’s protagonist veers from insecure to cocksure. By his standards, “Bad Habit” is fairly sonically rich, its gently funky guitar riff multitracked and layered with a keening synth line. It is so weird to hear this charmingly lackadaisical song on the radio, by a guy as low-key as Steve Lacy, who has been known to record nearly whole albums on his iPhone. Nonetheless, Lacy’s ditty might be the ultimate test of TikTok’s hit-making ability. 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. 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).
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