Welcome to the New York Times Popcast, your house on a landslide of music news and criticism.

I am your host, John Caramatica.

You know, if you were on TikTok, I mean, I gotta assume if you've made it this

far into popcasts in the lore of popcasts, you're on TikTok.

A couple months ago, you might have been dare I say besieged by a song that was everywhere

and is the song we just played and it was being covered and there were answer records

and there was just a lot of energy around this particular song.

And I think it was very revealing.

The song is called Complex Demo, it's by Katie Gregson McLeod, who was up until that

point.

College student who released music had aspirations of being a professional musician, was

doing the occasional gig, posted a snippet of a song that she'd written, a very heart-rending

sad song about how hard it is to let go of someone who maybe doesn't care if you let

them go or maybe needs you to hold on to them even though they don't want to hold on

to you.

Being incredibly astutely written, it's sharp, it's affecting, and it's spoke really,

really loudly.

And I think you could see that in all the kind of like second and third-year videos about

that song.

And to me, it really felt like part of a larger narrative on TikTok.

Over the last, let's say nine months, but really if we're gonna go back, it's always been

in play over the last couple years about frankly put, sad girl singer songwriters who are

...