Listening To: Austin by Dasha

And a few other songs

Lately, I’ve been listening to Austin by Dasha.

I’ve also been listening to Tshwala Bam by TitoM, Yuppe, EeQue, and S.N.E, and Можно Я С Тобой by Ap$ent.

In one of my last Listening To posts I wrote about Bécane – A Colors Show by Yamê. In the last few years, dozens of songs by obscure artists have had a viral moment on TikTok that launched them up the US charts, and I noted that Bécane – A Colors Show’s success was a French example of this same phenomenon. Since that post I’ve been curious to find more examples of TikTok hits in music markets I’m not immediately a part of. So I’ve been paying close attention to the charts and gathering very important data (watching a lot of TikTok) and I’ve got a few more that I think are worth mentioning.

The first is Tshwala Bam. This track is amapiano, a South African subgenre of deep house music that features a steady shaker, synthesizer backbeats, and a pitched log drum that often functions both as a form of both percussion and bass. For most American listeners, the most recognizable amapiano track is probably Water by Tyla, which also had a big moment on TikTok last year and subsequently reached the top 10 on the US Billboard Hot 100. Tyla has described her sound as ‘popiano,’ merging the sonic palette of amapiano with the structure of a more standard pop song (as a subgenre of house music, amapiano tracks often have run times of 8 minutes or longer and focus more on a slow build of looping and layering instrumentals than on a typical verse/chorus pop-song structure). Several West African artists like Davido, Asake, and Amaarae have also been incorporating log drums and shakers into their music recently, but Water was the “watershed” moment for the genre in the US. And Water’s success has brought amapiano to a global audience, and the genre’s influence can be heard from K-Pop to Kali Uchis (it has also taken over my own Spotify – I can’t get enough log drum these days).

But unlike Water, there is nothing pop about Tshwala Bam. The original version track runs for 6 minutes and 30 seconds and is sung in Zulu and Sepedi. This is pretty standard for the songs that top the South African charts, but an unlikely candidate to cross-over outside South Africa. Still, it reached the top 3 in Nigeria before a shorter remix with a Burna Boy feature came out. As far as I can tell, this is the first time a non-Tyla track from South Africa has charted on Nigerian Spotify (I didn’t fact check that, but it’s certainly unusual). Tshwala Bam owes its TikTok success to a dance challenge that is actually quite challenging, which has been done well by the likes of Jason Derulo, South African private school kids, and even Tyla herself, and poorly by many, many others.

The next song I’ve been listening to, Можно Я С Тобой (pronounced Mozhno Ya Stoboy) does not have a specific dance to accompany it. Instead, it’s mostly videos of Russian speakers’ pets asking to accompany their owners for various tasks (“Можно Я С Тобой” translates to “Can I Come With You”). It’s a very sweet trend, with Russian that is usually simple enough for me to understand (this one says “we didn’t choose her, but she chose us“). It's also a very distinctly Russian-sounding song. It mirrors the danceable post-punk of songs like Небо by SadSvit And Танцы by Ssshhhiiittt!. Though I should note Ap$ent is Belarusian and his song is actually censored in Russia. I imagine many English speaking TikTok users haven’t ever heard this one on their For You pages at all, since most of its videos are in Russian. But that just shows how vast the TikTok media landscape is. During its peak last March, it was the 7th top song on the platform globally, outpeaking both Tshwala Bam (17), and the inescapable Karma by Jojo Siwa (11). And like Tshwala Bam (though unlike Karma), this TikTok success translated directly to streaming success, as the song topped the Spotify charts in Ukraine, Bulgaria, and Kazakhstan.

But the main TikTok song I can’t get out of my head right now is not from South Africa or Belarus, but the great country of Texas.

Last year was a commercial high for country music. Four country songs reached No 1 on the Hot 100, the most of any year in its history, and one of these, Last Night by Morgan Wallen, was the biggest song of 2023. There are three main theories I’ve seen for why this happened. The first is that country listeners, who tend to skew older, are finally joining streaming services, which has allowed Billboard to track their listening more accurately. The second is that it’s stayed relevant by poking controversy – which there has been a lot of. The third, and the one I hear discussed least often, is that country music is finally starting to expand to new audiences.

Over the last decade, country has adopted sounds from all sorts of other genres. Trap beats, pop chords, rock guitars, and even the occasional EDM drop can be found in today’s country. Because of this, newer hits like Last Night or Luke Combs’ cover of Fast Car can be played on pop radio without sounding out of place. Artists are also taking to TikTok to market their music. And non-country artists, like Lil Durk, Post Malone, and Beyonce, have dabbled in the genre as well, bringing it to listeners who might be apprehensive to touch it otherwise.

This brings us to Dasha, whose song Austin went viral on TikTok late last February and has since reached the top 30 on the Hot 100. This story is just like any other viral TikTok hit. An independent artist promotes her song with a dance that people emulate, getting the song to more ears until it becomes a hit beyond the original dance challenge.

But despite being a country song where Dasha slams an ex who is destined to an eternity of being “drunk, washed-up in Austin,” the song has been most successful not in Texas or California (where Dasha is actually from), but northern Europe.

We tend to think of country as a uniquely American genre. But while it has its roots in the US, the globalizing world of music has led to a globalization of country. This isn’t limited to Dasha, either. In some ways, it makes sense that Dasha, who was a Nashville outsider with a TikTok presence before her viral moment, could have an audience outside the confines of US country radio. But country music was already the fastest growing genre in Britain in 2022, and I imagine that hasn’t slowed down. Last Night and Fast Car hit the top 10 on the Spotify charts in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Another recent country hit, I Remember Everything by Zach Bryan and Kacey Musgraves, reached the top 20 in seven countries (the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Norway, and Sweden). And in the time it took me to write this, another country song, A Bar Song (Tipsy) by Shaboozey, is number 1 on the Spotify charts in Norway and Sweden, and top 10 in nine others (it has so far peaked at only number 3 in the US). Even Rich Men North of Richmond by Oliver Anthony Music, a song that owes its US success entirely to conservative media praise and its allusions to Republican politics, spent two baffling months in the top 50 on Spotify in Ireland.

I’m initially surprised to see that country music is producing hits outside the US. But why should I be? American pop, rap, rock, and house music can be heard all around the world, and have influenced countless musicians around the world. So why would country be any different? If anything, it was strange that it took so long for country to follow suit.

One of my favorite things about the streaming era is how interconnected the global music community is now. From my perspective as a listener, I can play music South Africa, Belarus, or Ireland whenever I want. And that music, in turn, is evolving in countless directions as doors open for cross-genre collaboration. But with the sheer volume of music on Spotify, it can sometimes be daunting to search for anything outside my comfort zone. This is why I appreciate TikTok, both for its new role in the meme-to-hit-song pipeline, and for the occasional oddball videos I get, where I’m clearly not the target audience. Videos like the Можно Я С Тобой cats, where I can find a slice of culture that is both recognizable (TikTok song with pet videos), but also originating well outside what I’d consider my “home community.”

I’m worried about what the pending American TikTok ban means for all of this. It obviously won’t stop TikTok from making hits Africa or Eastern Europe. TikTok has over a billion active users, most of whom won’t be directly affected by the US ban. Most of Tshwala Bam and Можно Я С Тобой (and Austin)’s listeners will move on, maybe without even noticing the US ban, to the next trends to take over (pieces of) the platform. And music will continue to innovate as it always has. Maybe Ap$ent’s next song will feature a log drum. Or maybe TitoM will become a country singer to fill the void once the Americans are gone. Whatever culture emerges from TikTok in 2025, I’m certainly going to miss being there for it.