What’s With All the #Hashtag Songs?

What’s With All the #Hashtag Songs?

Okies, I had to find out seeing as I don't do twitter and this was confusing the heck out of me. Trying here to stay with the times ... for what they're worth. And to think, until Mariah came out this week, I honestly thought Justin's song was actually called "Number That Power"!



With the Song of Summer not yet nearly decided — despite our best efforts to call it early — the odds are strong that the winner will have one thing: a #hashtag. (I have #hashtagged the word hashtag so that you'll further understand my point. But you know what? #GetUsedToIt.) Record companies, and the artists they represent, are finally figuring out this newfangled .biz we call the Internet, and their initial response (after suing everyone's pants off for downloading music, ha!) is #HASHTAGS. We're certainly not the first to notice, nor shall we be the last. Big names are hopping on the #hashtag express all the way to Twitter-trending fame, and the real question is: Is this particular strategy going to last? Sure, after a song's initial release, the title is definitely bound to hit high up on that list of trending topics, but soon after you're left with a #hashtagged song title. Forever. Outside the context of Twitter and the Internet, it's pretty silly.


If you want to blame anyone for this particular trend, let's go with Will.I.Am. The tech-minded producer-artist-entrepreneur is already well-known for his love of THE FUTURE, and I'm choosing him to blame. Take "#thatPOWER," his duet with the Twitter-loving pop star (with the YouTube origin) Justin Bieber:


Next up? My personal pick for Song of Summer: Mariah and Miguel's "#Beautiful," whose one-word #hashtag was decidedly a strange decision. Why? Because tagging one word that people use pretty often happens to be useless on Twitter. It will no doubt get lost in the noise. Also, the song itself has nothing to do with #hashtags or the Internet. Can a song with a silly #hashtag name have the same staying power as one without? Imagine if Mariah's "One Sweet Day" was released today as "#OneSweetDay"?

But, hey, I'm a fan of THE FUTURE as much as the next @person, and today's addition to the #Hashtag genre might actually be a winner. J.Lo and Pitbull's "#LiveItUp" comes complete with a RedOne beat and a song title worthy of #hashtagging. Why? Because #LiveItUp is a summertime catchphrase just as much as it is now backed by a catchy EDM track. By attaching themselves to this feel-good attitude, J.Lo and Pitbull become the emotive #LiveItUp.

Is this the final frontier for the Twitterization of music? Probably not. Naturally, as the way that we communicate about music changes, so will the way music is marketed at us. Will "#LiveItUp" stand the test of time? Who knows. But it'll certainly last through the summer.

EDM is an entirely enclosed gimmick for the American market, because consumers in other countries can get their heads around differing styles of similar genres.

Crunk didn't mean anything special outside of the USA either.

Will I am is a gimmick fiend.

I noticed UK rapper Example used #Hits as the name for his compilation album last week, which charted at the surprisingly low position of 11. He of course took his name from his initials being e.g. so is no stranger to a snappy gimmick.