Ryan Francis Bradley

And I think that she very candidly

is putting out music that works really well with video.

And whether or not she's, I think it's fair to say that she set out to make a really successful pop song and did.

And part of its success, a large part of its success, I would say, is that it works really well with video, that it builds orchestrally, that it has these nice instrumental breaks to lyrics and is picking up a lot of the tricks that sync music producers have long used, like having a longer instrumental intro and a longer instrumental outro and making sure that it builds and it has these big hits and these like breaks.

There's a very interesting thing I would say in pop now where big pop songs really need a 15 to 30 second moment that really works on video.

And that is where it gets used on TikTok.

And that is how it becomes a hit.

Oh, it's starting to sound sad, Ryan.

You know...

Man, I'm of two minds about this.

I think you can get depressed about where music is today and how it's starting to sound the same.

I feel on the other hand, I'm kind of like music has always reflected where a culture is and music has always tried to, musicians have always tried to craft songs that are going to be wildly popular and get heard.

And if this is the way to do it, then so be it.

I will say after reporting this, look, I'm a middle-aged music snob, and a lot of this stuff I was a little snooty about going into the reporting.

And then,

No surprise, you get into it and you talk to the people behind these tracks and you see that they're coming at it with real intent and real interest and the real human thing that makes music interesting to other humans.

And it became a lot more interesting to me.

And it made me understand pop music that I was a little dismissive of a little bit better and appreciate it a little bit more.

Oh my gosh, we didn't do the thing.

The elephant in the room.