Everywhere you look right now, the sounds and fashions of 15 years ago, ones relegated to MySpace profiles and the Hot Topic next to a mall’s food court, are getting a huge amount of mainstream attention.
It may seem counterintuitive that a mall-punk renaissance is happening at a moment when physical malls are largely inaccessible, but it starts to make sense when you realize that TikTok is doing for the current generation of internet users what MySpace did to the previous one.
The former rapper Machine Gun Kelly picked up a guitar last year and released a shockingly straightforward pop punk album called Tickets To My Down Fall, which went number one on the Billboard 200. Emo rappers like nothing,nowhere and KennyHoopla are making rock songs with Blink-182’s Travis Barker.
Hyperpop artists like 100 Gecs are collaborating with Linkin Park and Fall Out Boy. And Rebecca Black remixed her viral hit “Friday” with a feature from the newly-reunited emo-adjacent rap group 3OH!3, who are, themselves, putting out songs with 100 Gecs. Meanwhile, a bevy of Gen Z rock solo acts are pumping out radio-friendly pop emo songs, including YUNGBLUD and TikTokers Chase Hudson and Jaden Hossler.
Sad bedroom music is breaking down genre boundaries, turning everything into laptop music to be shared on smartphones. It’s a music and fashion movement as jumbled and nonlinear as the internet, a mess of sounds and aesthetics resurrected from the dead by the combined forces of TikTok’s algorithm, 2000s nostalgia, and COVID lockdown boredom.
The current champion of this wave of “TikTokcore,” as you could call it, is Travis Barker. The Blink-182 drummer has long been connected to the hip-hop scene, but in the last few years, has become extremely active in working with both emo rappers and hugely popular TikTok influencers.