Kevin Buckle: Message to young new bands – you need a dance routine
For the last couple of weeks my TikTok feed has been constantly featuring a Toronto girl band The Beaches. Now I only have a TikTok account at all because when the Butcher Billy Taylor Swift exhibition opened, a gentleman from Belgium recorded himself dancing in front of the displays and attracted over seven million views on TikTok.
I’m not a huge fan of the platform, though enough interesting things crop up for me to keep checking it out normally when I get the train into work in the morning.
The song featured is actually a very catchy tune called Blame Brett in which the singer blames her ex-boyfriend for her current commitment issues, though she has said it is more an apology to future partners than her dissing her ex Brett Emmons, the singer with Canadian band The Glorious Sons.
Seemingly the song went viral on TikTok in 2023 before it was even properly released when a teaser for the song which showed their lead singer, Jordan Miller, performing vocals as she recorded the song amassed 2.9 million views and over 1300 comments in no time at all.
Given the band had been going since 2009, it was completely unexpected and did lead to a fair amount of success in Canada and the States, but they were not a band I had been made aware of or ever been asked for.
However, they have recently toured the UK and supported Louis Tomlinson in the States and the song has been taken to a whole new level by a simple dance.
At one point in the song guitarists Kylie Miller and Leandra Earl hop sideways while playing their guitars and viewers on TikTok just can’t get enough. Again in terms of stagecraft they do it well and it is entertaining, but the dance is now receiving more attention than the song.
Unusually for something like this I hadn’t been asked at all in the shop for the album Blame My Ex that features the song, but I decided it was worth a punt and ordered ten copies of the vinyl, given that unlike many of these things it was actually a good song and a decent album.
One of our biggest selling bands in recent times is from San Diego called TV Gir l w ho started off for us as a TikTok band.
We have just posted a video of the dance hop along with a link to buy on all the social media platforms, so will see if all those views translate to sales though we did sell a copy in the shop the day after it arrived which is a promising start.
Before The Beaches featured so heavily on my feed it was a band called Strata with a song called Mr Procrastinator, which they promoted really well on TikTok in different ways, given they are just a young band from Preston and that song too is as good as anything the Arctic Monkeys have done.
It has had some attention and been played on national radio but it is clear now what they really need is a viral dance. I’ve given lots of advice to young bands starting up but never suggested adding a dance routine.