"Rhubarb bar" and co. How to quickly land a viral hit

Tiktok is changing the music industry. How else could a cabaret artist from Berlin become famous worldwide with the song "Barbaras Rhabarberbar"? Experts explain the phenomenon.

Bodo Wartke from Berlin has received the accolade of social media, so to speak. His tongue-twisting rap "Barbaras Rhabarberbar" went around the world on the Tiktok and Instagram platforms in spring. The accompanying dance video by him and fellow musician Marti Fischer was viewed around 48 million times at the end of June.

"I still can't really understand what actually happened," Wartke tells the German Press Agency. But how easy is it to land a viral hit on social media - and do artists benefit from it?

Success came suddenly - but not overnight

In the case of the Berlin music cabaret artist, it took almost six months for "Barbaras Rhabarberbar" to go viral: Wartke and Fischer had turned the tongue twister into a song and released it on Tiktok at the end of 2023.

At first, users shared the song or tried to pronounce the rhymes about a woman called Barbara who owns a rhubarb bar without making mistakes. Later, two Australian women discovered the song and came up with a dance to it. It spread like wildfire on Tiktok and then on Instagram and YouTube.

"With the song, you can feel - whether you understand German or not - that we enjoy what we're doing and that we convey it beyond language," says Wartke about the international success. The song has now been translated into languages such as Danish, Norwegian and Hebrew.

Old songs are also experiencing a revival

Users were therefore able to use "Barbara's Rhubarb Bar" for their own contributions - according to Tiktok, the audio file was reproduced in at least 105,000 short videos, with the music being played to dance or sing-along videos. Musicologist Barbara Hornberger describes this as "(re)appropriation by users".

Hornberger teaches popular music and digital music cultures at the University of Wuppertal and is the first chairwoman of the Society for Music Business and Music Culture Research (GMM).

However, this doesn't just happen to new songs, but can also bring old hits back from obscurity: Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)" from 1985, for example, experienced a resurgence in 2022 following the Netflix series "Stranger Things". The song was used as background music in 2.5 million short videos on Tiktok.

Many viral songs have one thing in common

What worked well with previous viral songs: speed. For example, the hook of the song should be quickly present, explains Hornberger. "Something has to happen in the first 15 seconds that interests me. This means that intros that feel like they last for hours or stories that are slow to get going, like in the past, work less well."

The labels Warner Music, Universal and Sony did not comment in Berlin on the question of whether or not artists base their songwriting on what is playing on Tiktok. The user "Girl on Couch" recently succeeded phenomenally with a quick hook.

She sang the following lyrics in a video on Tiktok: "I'm looking for a man in finance, trust fund, six-five, blue eyes", in German: "Ich suche nach einem Mann im Finanzwesen, mit Treuhandfonds, 1,90 Meter tall, blaue Augen." To this she asked if she had just written the song of the summer - and if someone could turn it into a real song.

Viral Tiktok hits "absolute exceptions"

The video now has more than 50.9 million views. "Girl on Couch" actually met a man as a result - the internationally renowned DJ David Guetta, who produced a remix from her clip and now plays it at parties.

The duo also entered the Official German Charts in the first week after its release - albeit only at number 83. Otherwise, Tiktok trends only influence the German charts indirectly - you first have to click on a viral hit on a streaming platform or on YouTube for it to count for the chart brokers, according to a spokesperson.

Hornberger believes that many people overestimate the opportunities for up-and-coming artists on the platform. "If you think about how many millions of young musicians around the world are trying to land a hit or become famous, then those who actually achieve this are absolutely exceptional cases."

What a viral hit brings an artist - and what it doesn't

Wartke, who has been on stage with various programs for more than 25 years, believes that Tiktok has advantages and disadvantages for musicians.

"The advantage is that songs can spread worldwide in the blink of an eye. The disadvantage is that Tiktok does not pay music creators appropriately. The operators basically only provide the infrastructure, but the content is provided by others free of charge," says the 47-year-old. Although he has incredibly high click figures, he earns "next to nothing". He hopes that his fame will also have a long-term effect on his performances as a live artist.

The issue of remuneration had already caused a dispute between the much-criticized Chinese company Tiktok and the music label Universal. At the beginning of this year, Universal withdrew its artists' music from the platform because they were not being remunerated for the use of the songs in the way that is standard for streaming providers. Billie Eilish and Adele, among others, are under contract with Universal.

In May, the companies agreed on a new deal - and the music returned. According to Tiktok, it does not see itself as a streaming platform, but it does ensure that rights holders receive royalty payments when their music is used. Artists can also link their music to streaming services on Tiktok.

dpa