Sped-Up Music and Misconceptions of Creativity
As a child who would grab my parent’s iPad to play Nyan Cat or Fruit Ninja, anything on the Internet that was fast-paced and so peculiarly artificially colored drew me in like a magnet. So it was no surprise when I became hooked on nightcore music videos on YouTube, sped-up pop songs with bright, neon thumbnails usually featuring anime characters and art styles. Clearly, I wasn’t the only one entranced, as some of the more popular videos, like “Nightcore - Angel With A Shotgun” by the YouTube channel CUTLoveRx, could gather upwards of 250 million views. Kids love vivid colors and fascinating movements; hit Netflix show CoComelon can attest to that. The peak of nightcore’s popularity was around the late 2000s and early 2010s, instilling a partiality in the current generation of young people to enjoy the sped-up music genre, which truly took off in the mid-2010s.
Sped-up music is the brainchild of the nightcore genre. High energy pop, hip hop, and R&B songs are typically used; in many cases, only the climaxes of songs are extracted and sped up for the purposes of filling a shorter video or compilation. Shorter clips are especially on the rise due to the growing popularity of social media platforms like TikTok. More prominent sped-up sounds on TikTok as of this writing include “Tek It” by Cafuné, “Drowning” by A Boogie Wit da Hoodie featuring Kodak Black, and “Cool For The Summer” by Demi Lovato. Not only has this led to increased use of these songs on TikTok, but their regular-tempo counterparts have climbed the Billboard charts and reached larger audiences on streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music. Tyler Blatchley, co-founder of the label Black 17 Media, attests that “sped up songs are becoming insanely popular,” demonstrating how this genre has gained the attention of mainstream music manufacturers.
Photo by Irina Iriser from Pexels
TikTok trends featuring sped-up songs usually include flashy transitions and eye-catching light and color schemes. People often make fun of those who engage in these trends, describing them as “cringe” or “low effort,” giving sped-up music a bad rep by association. But I’d like to argue that it takes a special kind of creativity to make engaging videos and audios. Not every song will sound good sped-up, and sped-up music creators add reverb, echo, or other sound effects at just the right moments of a song, further enhancing emotional climaxes. Contrary to what many preach, this absolutely requires skill. In a way, sped-up music is a form of DJing, and the ability to manufacture trends for adolescents is a hot commodity in a world dominated by social media. If remixes of songs are accepted as a valid form of music and artists who solely work on remixes are still viewed as artists, we should offer the same grace for creators of sped-up music.
Whenever a new form of creative expression is popularized in the media, backlash from those who cannot stand deviation from the known is to be expected. Unfortunately, it will probably take a few more years for public opinion of sped-up music to improve. However, among Gen-Z audiences, this genre is already extremely popular, and it is on the rise to becoming a cornerstone of American pop music. As long as short-form content platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels continue to monopolize social media, sped-up songs are only going to continue gaining traction regardless of negative views from older generations. Recognizing the constant evolution of musical trends and balancing that with people’s preconceived expectations is a difficult task, but with its high energy and moveability, sped-up music undoubtedly has a rightful place at the forefront of content creation today.