Recently there has been some talk on the internet about TikTok Star and now singer, Dixie D’amelio. The “talk” has included how Dixie recently had more monthly streamers on Spotify popular musicians such as Frank Ocean, Childish Gambino, Tyler The Creator, and was not far off from an artist like SZA. It should be known that these artists didn’t have any type of social media fame before becoming musicians. These posts were mostly just joking around, with comments like “this is disrespectful,” and there are certainly bigger things going on right now, it wasn’t relevant for long. That being said, it was something that interested me. Simply put, does Dixie deserve to be so close to an artist like SZA? Or to be above artists like Frank Ocean? These are not underground or underrated artists, Tyler has a Grammy, people are still talking about Childish Gambino’s Because the Internet album from 2013, and Frank Ocean is Frank Ocean. What value does Dixie have that puts her to the same level as these sorts of artists?

Before going further, it should be said that the monthly listeners on Spotify is not a super pertinent rating of an artist’s value. Since I saw those posts in which Dixie had so many listeners, she has already dropped below Frank Ocean. Total streams are perhaps more important, in which case every artist I’ve listed knocks Dixie’s most popular song “Be Happy” (~64 million streams) out of the park. Not to mention this is only on Spotify, platforms like Apple Music, or even something like Youtube views are not included. It’s pretty easy to say that Dixie’s music is just going viral as a result of her TikTok success giving her a jumpstart. If this is the case, then what’s the big deal? Why am I writing this dumb article for a High School then?

These are great questions.

The issue that gets brought up is whether this success is deserved, even if it’s temporary. It’s nothing new for social media celebrities to use their platform to jumpstart careers in other fields, particularly music. It’s both impossible and pointless to determine where exactly this started, but YouTubers have been well known for music, especially with diss tracks against other Youtubers. Dixie D’amelio is the same thing, but just for TikTok right now. Of course, she is far from the first person to make music and TikToks, as mxmtoon has had a few viral songs, and many musical artists have used TikTok to promote their music/themselves.

This is all well and good, but what does any of this really mean?

Well, to be completely honest, not much. Dixie D’amelio is one of the most popular people on TikTok, of course, people will support her doing something like pop music. This is all just strange really; it’s weird for someone with six songs, two of which are remixes of one, to have so many people listening to them. Although it’s likely to be short-lived, it’s lasted longer than expected. Personally, I’m not super upset about all this, despite being huge fans of some of the people that she was beating. Her current success is surprising and may be unprecedented, but not a result of much else than her built-up following.

So what would get someone like me to listen to Dixie more? Well, honestly there’s just a lack of personality in her sound. This is pretty common with these kinds of artists; while they have the money and therefore resources to attain a professional sound, they lack the experience and/or talent to make something that feels original or personal. Depending on their reasons for making the music (usually just for money) they will likely not try very hard to evolve past this one-dimensional style since their fans will probably listen to their stuff anyway. For these reasons, I doubt I will ever go out of my way to listen to Dixie D’amelio for personal enjoyment over another artist, but I’d be happy to eat my words.