How a catchy tune became the soundtrack to TikTok’s craziest videos | WBOI

Use TikTok for some entertainment and you will find short videos of a fluffy cat cuddling a fluffy dog, a toddler holding a bag of Doritos as if it were a teddy bear, or a penguin creating artwork with pinball print.

You have to turn up the volume to hear what all these messages have in common: a song made ten years ago called “Monkeys Spinning Monkeys” by Kevin MacLeod.

Although few people know the name of the song, or the person who composed it, it has served as background music for millions of TikToks and has been played billions of times. It’s also all over Instagram and YouTube.

The song’s story illustrates one of the most important ways music and social media have shaped each other over the past decade – with the proliferation from viral, loopable songs that instantly convey the mood of a video to digital platforms designed for easily copying sound from video to video.

The man behind the monkeys

Kevin MacLeod is a prolific composer who started out as a computer programmer. He created songs for fun on his computer and for audiences at improv comedy shows.

MacLeod’s compositions are what’s known as “library music,” a stockpile of songs that content creators draw from to score their works. These are the kind of melodies you’d never queue up on Spotify, but end up in the background of all kinds of things: video games, moviesand numerous short videos.

“Most of the time I feel like I’m watching a YouTube video and the music sucks,” says MacLeod. “And I’m like, well, let me try to do something better.”

And as soon as he tries something better, he releases it for free.

In the early days of his career, MacLeod created his own licenses – not to protect his rights, but to give them away. MacLeod says his approach was to “find a license and then do everything the opposite,” adding clauses like “you.” to have the right to use this for your personal items. You to have the right to use this commercially. You can sell this thing in another product if you want.

Than Creative Commons came along and standardized royalty-free rights. While some composers and industry people argue Because such an exchange undermines composers’ ability to make a living, MacLeod says he just wants to get his work out into the world.

“I just want my stuff to be heard,” MacLeod explains. “You know, you have to make it as easy as possible.”

Soundtracks spread with two taps of a finger

In the early days of YouTube, users posted just about anything, regardless of copyright, he says Bondy Kayea researcher at the University of Leeds and co-founder of TikTok Cultures Research Network.

But with the crackdown on digital fingerprinting programs like Content ID, Kaye says people are increasingly turning to royalty-free songs, including “Monkeys Spinning Monkeys.”

“And then you just follow that train all the way to TikTok,” says Kaye.

Kaye says that while YouTube lets users upload new videos, TikTok makes it easier to create videos that build on existing content with features that let users splice a reaction video alongside the original, take a short clip from it or reuse the music. (Instagram also includes a similar feature.)

“So if you happen to see a viral video, with just two taps of your finger you can create and publish a new video with that same song.”

As more people saw TikToks with “Monkeys Spinning Monkeys,” more people came made TikToks with ‘Monkeys Spinning Monkeys’ too.

Something magical about “Monkeys”

TikTok said they couldn’t give us all-time numbers, but rankings Through industry viewers in recent years routinely show “Monkeys Spinning Monkeys” as one of the most used songs on the platform. MacLeod says that of his 2,000 compositions, “Monkeys Spinning Monkeys” accounts for half of all listens.

Even with the Creative Commons license, he’s still made well over seven figures, mostly from other countries that don’t always follow the same payment protocol.

So is “Monkeys Spinning Monkeys” just a song in the right place, with the right rights, at the right time? Or is there something special about it that makes it such an appealing soundtrack to our favorite crazy, happy highs?

“The answer is both,” he jokes Paula Harpera musicologist at the University of Chicago who writes about sound and the Internet.

Harper says “Monkeys Spinning Monkeys” subtly uses some classic musical references, such as the thumping bassline.

“You can find examples going back to the 18th century, where composers like Mozart use boom, boom, boom, boom,” says Harper, mimicking the bouncing bass line, “to indicate that this is crazy, this is silly, this is comic relief. .” For example, she points to Mozart’s first aria Don Giovanni, ‘Notte e Giorno Faticar’, when a similar baseline introduces Leporello as ‘the crazy cartoon character’.

Then there’s a melody “that’s definitely reminiscent of something like a calliopelike a carousel,” says Harper. A good example, she says, is the circus march “Barnum and Bailey’s Favorite,” which has the same basic structure of a light melody on top of an alternating bass line.

When “Monkeys Spinning Monkeys” is released, Harper says people probably don’t consciously think of old-fashioned circuses, and that they Certainly don’t think about Mozart. But together the song plays on associations that should immediately evoke a mood.

Composer Kevin MacLeod acknowledges that “Monkeys Spinning Monkeys” is not exceptional musically. “I mean, the mix isn’t particularly great. The instruments aren’t particularly great…. There’s nothing sonically interesting about it,” MacLeod admits.

But it brings these musical ideas together in a way that lets you know what’s happening, and with – he thinks – a bit of subtlety.

“It’s not attacking you with comedy. You know, there’s no slide whistles, train horns and honking cars,” laughs MacLeod. “People like it. People use it. And it does something.”

That “thing” has moved from platform to platform, from cat video to cat video. And whatever happens happens with TikTokthe sound of “Monkeys Spinning Monkeys” will probably be stuck in our heads for years to come.

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