This Dominic Fike song from 2018 is only 1:38 long.

All the focus is on how this eight year old number suddenly gained traction on social media, blasting “Babydoll” to the top of the Spotify chart both globally and in the U.S.

If you do research, you cannot figure out why. Everybody says they’re going to explain it, even Fike himself in an interview, but you listen and ultimately realize no one knows. In a digitized world where we keep hearing that AI is about to eclipse humanity, somehow this ancient number found its way to the top through people, one by one. AI can’t create this virality, only people can. And at this point, AI can’t tell you what caused the trend either, it’s organic.

And it’s the labels’ worst nightmare. Because they’re not in control. For all the hype about the manipulation of social media to break Geese… When you dig down deep, the posts that were made were so generic that sans substance, nothing would have happened.

Then again, one can say that artists are out of touch with the public. I’m less concerned with wannabes using TikTok success to get signed than the reverse, established acts making TikTok friendly songs!

If one listens to “Babydoll,” one can see why it would be good source material for a clip. It’s hypnotic and repetitive. And the title, and its use in the song, fits perfectly in this narcissistic world, where you advertise your wares online, trying to illustrate how great and desirable you are.

The script has been flipped. The person in the video is the star, not the artist that made the music! Today’s hits are fungible, fodder for the public to mix and match. 

Looked at through the lens of musicologists, all those denigrating modern music, “Babydoll” is nearly laughable, there’s not much there. Bridge? Where is that confounded bridge! But maybe that’s the wrong way to look at modern culture. We live in a topsy-turvy world, where the PUBLIC is the star, not those making the music itself.

If the acts were so damn great, the audience wouldn’t spend so much time shooting selfies at the show, they’d be riveted to what’s on stage. But they’re not. Sure, they want to be able to tell everybody they were there, TO BURNISH THEIR OWN IMAGE, to gain bragging rights!

And “Babydoll” is so damn short… It doesn’t need to be any longer, it’s all there in a minute and a half.

With CDs containing 80 minutes of music, everybody stretched out, added more tunes that went on infinitely. But we live in a bite-sized world. I’m not saying people have a short attention span, because they don’t, biology hasn’t changed, but if you want them to binge, to dedicate a ton of time, you have to be consistently great, and almost none of these albums are, never mind many being so long, even a hundred minutes!

How long does it really take you to get your message across?

Do you need a thirty second intro? A stretched-out solo? Are you just doing it that way because that’s how everybody else has been doing it?

My favorite song under two minutes is the Box Tops’ “The Letter,” which clocks in at a blistering 1:52, with all the changes and magical moments absent from “Babydoll.” Then again, “The Letter” is forever, “Babydoll” is momentary trash, like so much of the Spotify Top 50.

Listening to “The Letter” you’ll be stunned it’s under two minutes. Because it’s got a magical intro, lasting a large three seconds. And then there’s Alex Chilton’s vocal, rough and meaningful, intense in a way his work with Big Star was not. And there’s a bridge…which does not lead into a chorus. And there’s a message. Do you find all this in modern music? OF COURSE NOT! Certainly not from people making sub two minute records.

And we don’t live in the old world, which too many young acts can’t accept. An under two minute song pays the same amount per stream as something far longer.

Listeners want to be grabbed right away. They don’t want to hear you masturbate, building an opus that is substandard.

Writing camps. Artists. They need to change their goals. They need to make their music shorter! Excise all the extensions that came along with FM/album rock over FIFTY YEARS AGO! (Well, maybe if you could write “Free Bird”…but even Skynyrd couldn’t replicate that.)

This is not so hard, it’s just that when you leave out the superfluous extras, you must focus on the core elements.

Why should a record not demand attention, hook the listener instantly?

And if there’s a story, however compact the record, it lends itself to social media videos.

Ultimately this is a win-win. It’s a paradigm change, that has already happened, but the industry, and the prognosticators and the press, have not acknowledged it. We want it shorter, we want it instant, we want it comprehensible so the public can chop it up, use it… You don’t want someone trying to find the hook in an eight minute song, you want to deliver the OBVIOUS hook(s) right away.

“The Letter” is infectious, one listen is enough to want, to NEED, to play it ad infinitum. And in today’s money-focused world, a short hit song rains down money…KACHING!

Don’t think you’re still living in the old world. It’s a totally new marketplace. There’s no wall between public and performer. You’re equals, in it together. Think about serving the audience, giving them something that they can use to express THEMSELVES!

That’s what I’d do.