I was excited to read this GQ think piece by author Eileen Cartter- and if you have an alert set to mentions of your name and this pops up and you read it- well done. It is, of course, my opinion that World Class Sinner is, in fact, the song of the summer, born out largely by its popularity on tiktok where it has gone from 0 uses two weeks ago to 3500 tiktok videos, 13 million views of the tiktok hastag #worldclasssinner and six and a half million song streams at a rate of over half a million per day on spotify for an artist, Lily-Rose Depp who essentially had zero listeners before the song was released.
There is a non-explicit version lurking on the dsp's, suggesting that a push for radio is in the works (there being no other reason to make a non-explicit version in the streaming era). Now, there is no denying that half a million a day isn't a huge number, but if you compare it to the size of the pre-existing size for the artist, it's impressive. Right now, the 200th most played daily song has one million plays a day. But if you look at the list of the top 200 global spotify tracks, the numbers are dominated by, essentially, catalog tunes that have been up for years. Also lurking in the background is a version of the song by JENNIE one of the members of BLACKPINK. JENNIE, of course, has a much more active fan base than Lily-Rose Depp, so one would expect her version to outperform the original on streaming services since it's like, Lily-Rose Depp, monthly listeners before release, 10,000. JENNIE, monthly listeners before release, four and a half million.
In conclusion, there is the genius of the song itself, which is mostly expressed through it being played repeatedly by many who hear it but also by the common observation that the first time a listener hears the song the reaction is often and frequently negative, but that over time the influence becomes overwhelming spurring repeated listenings, tiktok views, etc. That, my friends, is a pop hit and it always has been since hits were folk songs like Pop Goes the Weasel. The ability to evoke horror, fascination and spur obsession has been the hallmark of popular music hits for over half a century, and World Class Sinner has already demonstrated all those qualities with a global audience.
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