In recent years, social media influencers with millions of followers have increasingly ventured into the music industry, often with questionable results. Although their huge fan bases aid in early stream counts, these influencers lack musical talent and creativity. Despite this, these influencers still feel compelled to release garbage music to maintain relevance. More often than not, these songs feel more like a marketing ploy than genuine expression.
We’ll be looking into 3 examples of influencers who are quite infamous for their ear-numbing music: KSI’s “Thick of it”, Dixie D’Amelio’s “Be Happy”, and Dream’s “Mask”.
Olajide Olatunji, more commonly known as “KSI”, is a prominent Youtuber with an impressive subscriber count of 24 million. Since beginning his music career in 2015 with the release of his single “Lamborghini”, he has released 2 albums and 21 singles. Recently, KSI’s new single, “Thick of It” featuring Trippie Redd has received an outstanding wave of negative feedback on various social media platforms. One of the primary reasons for the hate against his single is the music video, which constantly features his energy drink brand, Prime. As a co-founder of Prime, KSI is shown multiple times throughout the music video advertising his brand. This has left many of his viewers feeling disconnected from the music itself, and they believe KSI’s motive for releasing music is a cash-grabbing market strategy rather than genuine enjoyment and creativity. A sophomore from Cresskill High School mentions, “I thought KSI released this song as a joke. But when I realized that he was getting mad at all of the hate comments, I could not believe that this song was a song that he genuinely put effort into because of how bad it is.” Ultimately, despite KSI’s 9 years of music, the music he produces is still poor, which further begs the question of what drives KSI to continue to make music.
Dixie D’Amelio, originally known for her popularity on Tiktok, started her music career in 2020 with the release of her single, “Be Happy”. Her song, co-written with her TikTok famous sister, Charli D’Amelio, covers themes of mental health and her experience with the pressure of social media. Despite the meaningful message behind the song, it was heavily criticized with comments indicating that the lyrics and chorus lacked impact. This led many to believe that due to the lack of emotional impact, the song failed to convey its message which it was aiming for. As a result, “Be Happy” left some fans expressing disappointment over the poor execution of its meaning. A freshman from Cresskill High School says, “During 2020, I was such a big fan of Dixie D’Amelio, but even I could not defend the music she was releasing.” Overall, many critics believe that while Dixie has had her highs in her music career, her subpar performances, such as “Be Happy” is a perfect example of an influencer who continues to release bad music for her community to listen to.
Lastly, we’ll be looking into Clay, Also known as “Dream” who has a massive influence on not only the Minecraft community but the YouTube community as a whole which encompasses millions of young children and adults worldwide. Boasting 32 million subscribers and over 3.1 billion views across his channel, Dream is a force in the YouTube community. With such an influence on primarily the Minecraft community, a very well-known video game, many were dumbfounded after watching his new song, ”Mask”. If you have listened for less than 20 seconds, the amount of hate that Dream received will feel extremely justified. Firstly, the lyrics discuss struggles with mental health and identity, which most felt that it lacked depth and authenticity. Secondly, his vocal performance was laughable and clearly overprocessed. The combination of these factors led to a flood of negative reactions and memes across all social media platforms. This could very well be the worst case of influencers releasing music out of any creator on the internet.
