How Important Is Dance In Music? (Thinkpiece)

A little over a month ago, I released a thinkpiece entitled "Is TikTok Ruining Music?", where I explored the effect that the app is having on popular music both for the better and for the worse in a brief evaluation of the pros and cons of such a polarising force in the music of today. You can think of this post as the followup to that, where I'll discuss the importance of dance in music culture and its place now and in the future.

Since humans were hunter-gatherers in the stone ages, dance and music have been fundamental aspects of our existence. Though the two are separate, they're forever intertwined and in many cases one exists as a result of the other. There have been many examples of dance crazes being born of popular songs, although more often than not in the last decade or so it's a dance craze elevating the song to popularity. From the Macarena to the Mannequin Challenge (and other examples not beginning with "M"), there are some dances that have become so ubiquitous with their counterpart songs that separating them seems impossible. The question is...how important is dance in music today?

In 2020, TikTok is indisputably the most influential short-form video sharing platform with an impact on the charts as a result of songs gaining popularity directly through the app due to lip syncs and, more prominently, with dances consisting of just a few complex moves to suit the 15-60 second clips of songs (the app's clever way to bypass the choppy waters of Copyright Ocean). Like it or not, this is the way that hit songs like "The Box", "Say So", "Savage" and of course "Old Town Road" have found fame, the latter of which is now the longest running number one in the US to date.

Taking those four examples, although they have all had millions of people posting short dances to the songs on TikTok, only two of them are firmly associated with the respective dances that, in the cases of "Say So" and "Savage", are arguably larger entities than the songs themself. I don't personally think this is in any way wrong, it certainly remains the case with the aforementioned Macarena, although what frustrates me is the claiming that TikTok users do of songs popular on the platform when the dance is fundamental to the song's success, branding these tracks as "TikTok songs" and claiming some sort of possession of a track that exists in its own right outside of the platform that made it. Noone goes around branding Prince and Madonna songs like "Purple Rain" and "Like A Virgin" as "Warner Bros songs" simply because that was the label that marketed, promoted and supported the song, and that brings me onto my next point.

In my opinion, TikTok has become similar to a record label or radio station in terms of the promotion songs and artists receive, although it's obviously far more democratic than either predecessors given the consumer's influence on what gets popular and the ability to maintain an artist's success, albeit in a subconscious way as I very much doubt anyone is thinking about the positive effect they're having on an artist's career by simply dancing to their song. It's a visual form of promotion for a visual age that has transcended the audio restrictions of a radio. The thing that people will overlook when describing TikTok as the "terrifying future of music" is that a more democratic and visual form of promotion is nothing new.

Last decade we had Vine, but predating that by several decades is MTV, the first true example of how visuals and dance came directly to the support and promotion of music on a large scale that wasn't as restricted as mainstream radio and the dictations of record labels. Of course, this was also the same time that the first independent artists started to flourish and different musical directions began to truly diverge and diversify throughout the 80s and 90s. Since then, music videos and dances have only grown in significance not only as a part of our culture but as an element that can make or break a song's success.

As I concluded in my first thinkpiece on TikTok, the platform is a goldmine of opportunity but, much like the California Gold Rush of 1949, there will never be enough gold for everyone to benefit from that opportunity and it could never become the sole form of promotion and subsequent income for every artist*. For all its faults, TikTok is the most democratic and contemporary form of this consumption and marketing of music and, although my problems with it remain prominent, I do think that it's at least helping music to move forward from the perpetual coasting of the mainstream in much of the 2010s. Yes, the dances in TikTok can be annoying or fantastic (depending on your opinion) but regardless, they're influential and important to the state of music right now.

 *I know that currently artists do not make any money out of TikTok directly but any level of popularity on the platform results in attention that results in more streams and sales, so my point on TikTok affecting income stands.

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Thank you for reading this followup thinkpiece on TikTok's effects on music, this time focusing on the visual side of things. I hope you enjoyed this slightly more objective type post, and if you're dying to know my opinions on the platform itself then here goes: I am both happy at the boosting of lesser known, younger artists' success, although I personally find many of the dances and some of the songs to be incredibly irritating. We have got some incredible songs and artists who've been aided by the platform though, so I by no means hate or despise it.

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