Mediocre Copycat Musicians Who Flood Big Tech’s Algorithms Make Music Worse

The white walls of a studio sound stage are covered in black and pink graffiti as a grown man wearing elaborate eye makeup and a pair of brown workman’s coveralls approaches a black microphone wrapped in neon-pink duct tape and sings: “This sh-tty state is full of losers and I pretended to ever f-cking like you / I swear to God I’m gonna get out of here someday ’cause if I can’t I’ll f-cking end it.”

Aryia, a social media personality and independent musician with hundreds of thousand of followers across multiple platforms, is the one singing the ridiculously incoherent lyrics. Aryia came to my attention when an anonymous Twitter user’s post lamenting his derivative creative efforts went semi-viral on the platform.

The song in question “Losers,” This is a sound that has become increasingly common for musicians and performers who rely heavily on algorithmic social-media curation to boost their careers. People will click on something that is superficially similar to the commercially viable trend.  

Although the song is intended to express organic interpersonal and inner frustrations, it lacks any artistic substance and relies only on aesthetic tropes. It relies entirely on invoking musical cliches from late-’90s pop-punk (e.g., palm-muted power chords) and laying them over lyrics derived from an irony-poisoned ethos popularized by a generation of twentysomethings who find therapeutic relief in detaching from reality and embracing a self-deprecative worldview.

During the song’s second verse, Aryia professes: “I miss my ex, she’s a b-tch, I need someone to su— I can’t say that / Life sucks, Eso si que es, I’m in Spain without the ‘s.’” He also laments his lack of sexual companionship with those who are more sexy. “homeless without the ‘m.’”

The aesthetic adopted for the accompanying music video — the ironic subversion of masculine tropes by emphasizing male engagement with traditionally feminine concepts, such as makeup and the color pink, while ensuring the performer maintains masculine signifiers like five o’clock shadow to show that he is, in fact, a man — loudly echos trends popularized by Machine Gun Kelly (MGK).

The rapper-turned-corporate-punk-rocker is credited Many credit him for starting a revival in punk-rock that is commercially-friendly with the release of his highly-received 2020 album. “Tickets To My Downfall.” 

The album debuted at the top of the Billboard 200 so it is understandable that younger artists would try to replicate his approach. And Aryia certainly isn’t the only individual trying to “make it” This category includes mimetic content creation. Many musicians and bands trying to break into the mass market attempt to duplicate what is popular. After all, the goal is to make money.

If you use TikTok or another similarly situated algorithmically curated video-sharing platform, you will likely find up-and-coming or hoping-to-be-up-and-coming musicians attempting to replicate MGK-isms — their numbers are many.

And that’s fine. Music doesn’t have to be original to be good, but it does have to be good.

Artistic mimicry