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      Katie Gregson-MacLeod Sang About a ‘Complex’ Love. TikTok Responded.

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      The 21-year-old Scottish folk singer-songwriter found a sudden hit by tapping into the platform’s appetite for melancholy with a striking, sorrowful chorus.If TikTok has made you cry sometime this month, it’s likely thanks to Katie Gregson-MacLeod.On Aug. 4, the 21-year-old Scottish singer-songwriter posted a minute-long chorus to an unreleased song she’d written called “Complex” — an elegiac capturing of the hollow, zombielike experience of loving someone far more than they can, or will, love you back. Her voice is lovely and affecting, somewhere between wistful and determined as she sings about a relationship that’s ongoing, but already over:I’m wearing his boxersI’m being a good wifeWe won’t be togetherBut maybe the next lifeGregson-MacLeod had just written the song, and had no plans to release it. But by the following morning, TikTok had supersized it, finding the eyes and ears of several young female singer-songwriters who have been successful on the app, including Gracie Abrams, Lennon Stella and Maisie Peters.Suddenly, Gregson-MacLeod was a meme, embodying the app’s potential as an amplifier of melancholy. In just a couple of days, “Complex” became a trigger for what felt like a global group hug.“When the chorus did so well, I swore to myself, I am not changing one word of the rest of the song,” Gregson-MacLeod said of the full version of the song released to streaming services.Jaime Molina for The New York TimesTikTok is well-suited to this particular stripe of intimacy, because “people seem to love hearing going as in-depth of someone’s life as they can,” Gregson-MacLeod said last week in a video chat from her family’s home in Inverness, in the Scottish Highlands. “It’s a very online thing, but it’s also the same essence of what people love about people like Elliott Smith and Joni Mitchell. There are so many serious songwriters on there, but the ones that I’ve noticed doing really well are super raw, emotional and very stripped back.”Vulnerability is contagious, and TikTok, which allows users to both imbibe and amplify at the same time, is an optimal accelerant. The success of “Complex” reflects the evolving priorities of TikTok, which in its first couple of years was best known as an accelerant for dance trends, novelty songs and meme-able comedy, but is now just as often a home for sorrow. The shift reflects a partial maturation of the medium somewhere beyond pure escape.With her song gaining so much traction so quickly — the original post currently has 6.9 million views — Gregson-MacLeod did what any savvy young musician would do: She TikToked through it, posting duets with singers covering her, answering fan questions, making new memes, taking note of the interest from people she looked up to (“fletcher and olivia o’brien now know I have an anxious attachment style I was tryna play hard to get”). On Friday, Gregson-MacLeod formally released the full song — now titled “Complex (Demo)” — to streaming platforms, a few days after she signed a deal with the British arm of Columbia Records.The full song is, apart from one small tweak, identical to what she’d already written before her TikTok eruption. “When the chorus did so well, I swore to myself, I am not changing one word of the rest of the song,” she said. “It worked because it was just a moment, and it was a moment that was very real and raw. And then I was kind of like, if I changed too much or anything, then I’m going to be writing reactively and I’m going to be trying to think of what other people are going to want. And actually, it worked because it’s just what happened to me.”She didn’t elaborate on the specific scenario that prompted the song, but said, “For the most part, I write completely autobiographically, pretty much 100 percent.” She continued, “With this song, it was very much just like a very emotional moment, as you can probably tell. Literally just a moment where it all kind of poured out.”Until now, Gregson-MacLeod has been splitting her time between home and college, where she is studying history at the University of Edinburgh. She’s been releasing music on her own for a couple of years, including a frisky indie-pop EP last year, “Games I Play,” and a recent song, “Second Single Bed,” that’s almost as emotionally laserlike as “Complex.” In the last year, she’s found a welcoming home in the Edinburgh folk music scene that congregates around Captains Bar. She is a student of classic folk singers like Mitchell, Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, and also younger ones like Laura Marling, Lucy Dacus and, naturally, Phoebe Bridgers: “She’s a bit of a god.”Gregson-MacLeod began posting to TikTok in 2020, a few months into the pandemic. She has a natural way with humor in her posts — part sincere, part can-you-believe-we’re-all-doing-this. Before “Complex” took off, she was a barista at Perk Coffee & Doughnuts (“Inverness’s first doughnut shop,” she noted), and handled the shop’s social media posts. Perk was also where all the A&R representatives who traveled to Inverness to meet her this month ended up hanging out at different tables.“Complex” has allowed Gregson-MacLeod to take her place in an impressive lineage of female singer-songwriters who have used TikTok as an engine over the last two years: Lauren Spencer-Smith (“Fingers Crossed”), Sadie Jean (“WYD Now?”), Lizzy McAlpine (“You Ruined the 1975”), Jensen McRae, poppier singers like Gayle and Tate McRae. (The McRaes are not related.) And of course, the alpha of this phenomenon: Olivia Rodrigo, whose “Drivers License” began life as an acoustic snippet on TikTok before becoming the defining pop song of 2021.Gregson-MacLeod began posting to TikTok in 2020, a few months into the pandemic, and had been studying at college and working in a coffee shop when her song took off.Jaime Molina for The New York TimesOne of the particular quirks of putting vulnerable sentiment into a song is that, if it becomes popular, it no longer truly belongs to you. To have that happen so quickly with “Complex” has been lightly head spinning for Gregson-MacLeod, who is still getting acclimated to the way her song is being absorbed out in the wild.Mostly, she finds it humorous. When someone covers it with a slightly different sentiment in their caption, “I always comment ‘me for real,’” she said. Some people are using her melody and adding different lyrics. “The trend is now to rewrite it, which is, like, mildly insulting,” she said, laughing. “It’s like mainly lovely but you’re like, ‘Hey guys, can the trend be to appreciate what I wrote?’” She participated in a TikTok duet chain with Gayle and Catie Turner, shouting absurdist ad-libs over her tender tune.There have also been a few versions written from a male point of view. “Whenever I hear ‘She’s wearing my boxers,’ I’m like, ‘No,’” she joked. “Read the room, man.”Gregson-MacLeod put “(Demo)” in the title of the finished song because she wanted to be clear that this is just a way station. “I knew that this version had to be first, it had to be the raw emotional moment that it was in the video,” she said. “But it also leaves room for whatever I want to do in a few weeks, a few months or whatever, because I think it’s going to have a long life.” The sentiment belongs to everybody, but the song remains hers. More

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      in Movies

      ‘Bodies Bodies Bodies’ and Gen Z’s Struggle to Connect IRL

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      What happens when Gen Z loses Wi-Fi? Using horror and humor, the cast and filmmakers of the new slasher film aim for a generational portrait.A lip-locking close-up is the first we see of Sophie (played by Amandla Stenberg) and Bee, her girlfriend of six weeks (Maria Bakalova). Seemingly pulled from the pages of a fairy tale, Sophie confesses her love for Bee as they lie in a green meadow surrounded by nature. Within seconds, that affectionate scene gives way to a shot of the two absorbed in their phones as agitating dings and notifications dry up any remnants of intimacy or passion.These juxtaposed moments in the new satirical slasher “Bodies, Bodies, Bodies” ridicule the inability of its Generation Z characters to establish meaningful connections when a blinding screen forms a glaring barrier: “Sophie is expecting Bee to perform this intense level of vulnerability, even though she perhaps has not earned it,” Stenberg explained in a video call, “and I think that’s something that we expect now of everyone because we all perform vulnerability on the internet.”That’s one of several ways the film — about a group of privileged, internet-hungry 20-somethings stranded at a house party — tries to paint a portrait of the generation born within a few years before and after the millennium. Using humor, horror tropes and a cast of young stars, the film forces its characters to reckon with their nondigital identities and pokes fun at their symbiotic relationship with cellphones, their jargon based in trauma and the despot-like force of the group chat.As the director Halina Reijn said in a video call, “when the Wi-Fi goes out, it’s like they lose oxygen.”Soon after arriving at the isolated mansion, Sophie, Bee and their friends play Bodies, Bodies, Bodies, a party game involving a mysterious killer the players must identify and vote off in each round. But when the power goes out amid a hurricane, real bodies begin to fall. The characters’ behavior turns beastlike, Reijn said, and they forget how to respond to a crisis disconnected from the digital world.From left, Stenberg, Bakalova, Pete Davidson (David) and Rachel Sennott (Alice) in the film. The characters expect an intense level of vulnerability in person “because we all perform vulnerability on the internet,” Stenberg said.Eric Chakeen/A24“We can totally live in the face of death and still speak about things that are so unimportant but are so big to us,” Reijn said, adding, “I find that funny and tragic, of course, at the same time.”Stenberg, the star of “The Hate U Give” and the forthcoming “Star Wars” series “The Acolyte,” served as an executive producer of the film and drew on her own experience with digital life. She said the screenwriter Sarah DeLappe (a playwright known for “The Wolves”) embedded the script with so much wit that the moments of hypocrisy and vapidity became easy to create. “The point is not to say that Gen Z is not intelligent or sophisticated, but rather to provide a commentary for how absurd the circumstances” are, Stenberg said. (DeLappe was not available for comment.)Among those moments, the partygoers, friends since childhood, playfully film TikToks over the Tyga-Curtis Roach anthem “Bored in the House” and rave about social media likes.Gen Zers rely heavily on digital spaces for self-expression, community building and news gathering, Stenberg noted, but also face a sense of cognitive dissonance as they try to stay present in virtual life and reality. Indeed, said Sarah Bishop, a professor of communication studies at Baruch College, “for them to be able to defamiliarize or step back from this massive presence in their life is asking them to do something impossible, right? It’d be like asking them to imagine living without solid food.”Alice, played by Rachel Sennott (“Shiva Baby”), invites her 40-year-old Tinder match, Greg (Lee Pace), to the house party. In Reijn’s view, Greg serves as a bridge for older viewers: He tries to learn the rules of the game but uses sports analogies a dad might use, like “the best defense is a good offense,” and just bewilders the younger crew. For Reijn, who at 46 is a Gen Xer, Greg represented her personal detachment from Gen Z. “This goes, of course, for every generation that grows older, you always, sort of, lose touch,” she said.Sennott with Lee Pace, who plays Greg, a 40-year-old Tinder match.Gwen Capistran/A24Still, Reijn wanted the film to be real and honest but also funny, as each character shared the primal urge to belong when online usage swallows self-awareness.“I think we live in a time where we’re all very narcissistic, because we’re constantly on the camera,” she said. “Right now, we’re constantly aware of how we look and that is, of course, unprecedented, right? Normally, that was just actors, or musicians and now it’s all of us.”Despite the physical danger each character faces, their virtual realities remain central to the plot. As the lifelong friends, drunk and high, try to determine who the killer in the game is, Emma (Chase Sui Wonders) exclaims that her boyfriend, David (Pete Davidson), is gaslighting her. David’s response: The word is meaningless, and all she did was read the internet. Be more original.With the use of trauma-centered jargon like “gaslight,” “trigger,” “toxic” and “narcissist,” overuse can cheapen the language’s original value, Wonders said.“I think Gen Z has a brilliant, brilliant way of latching onto words, giving them so much beautiful meaning and having it spread like wildfire across cultures,” she said, “and then have it swallowed by irony.”Viewers can’t help but laugh at the friends’ misery as they take emotional stabs at each other. Sophie erupts about the double standard between Black and white drug users, but rather than admitting the disparity, Alice responds, “I’m an ally.” Or when Jordan (Myha’la Herrold) questions Sophie about ghosting the group chat, she responds, “You trigger me.” Herrold, who declared this her favorite scene, said the cast spent late hours editing and rewriting the sequence to make sure it remained relatable.“A lot of the Gen Z language, ‘gaslight’ and all that, some of that was cut and we were like, ‘No it has to stay in here,’” Herrold said.Bakalova, Mhya’la Herrold (Jordan) and Stenberg. Herrold said the cast made sure that Gen Z jargon wasn’t cut from the film. A24“Bodies Bodies Bodies” is one of a number of films from A24 to try to capture a generation — think “Spring Breakers” and “Lady Bird” before it — this time to the tune of Charli XCX’s “Hot Girl,” epitomizing the egotism of post, reply and repeat.This includes group chats. Comparable to cliques at a high school lunch table, the chat dictates who is in and out of the friend group. These chats hold political meanings, Stenberg said, and when Sophie strolls into the party without properly notifying the chat first, the house grows hostile.“I’ve been in friend groups before where it’s a big deal if someone is removed from the group chat or someone is added,” she said, “and it’s this horrendous, toxic thing where someone’s presence can be physically determined.”From digital media addictions to gripping group chats, Stenberg said, “Bodies Bodies Bodies” doesn’t aim to classify social media as the villain but the mirror within us all.“We have to think carefully and intentionally about how those tools can bring out and amplify the parts of us that are the scariest,” she said. More

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      in Music

      Is Beyoncé’s ‘Renaissance’ Rollout (Gasp!) Conventional?

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      The singer, who has prioritized innovation over commercial domination, has opted for a more standard playbook ahead of her seventh solo album, “Renaissance,” out Friday.An upbeat lead single ready for radio. An album title and release date with plenty of notice. A magazine cover story, followed by a personal mission statement, a fresh social media account, a detailed track list and a merchandise pre-sale.For most musicians, these are time-honored bullet points in the playbook for introducing a major new album. But for Beyoncé, who has spent the last decade-plus upending all conventions about how to market music, the rollout of “Renaissance,” her latest album due out Friday, is a striking shift — and perhaps a tacit acknowledgment that the game has changed.Before “Renaissance,” Beyoncé’s seventh solo studio album, the last time the singer participated in such industry-standard baby steps, with “4” in 2011, President Barack Obama was still in his first term and a European music start-up called Spotify was just arriving in the United States. Since then, there hasn’t been much about the formula for selling new music that Beyoncé hasn’t tweaked, disrupted or dismantled altogether.First there was “Beyoncé,” the paradigm-shifting surprise “visual album” from 2013. Then came “Lemonade” (2016), an allusion-packed tour de force that arrived with more mystery as a film on cable television. By partnering closely with Tidal, the streaming service then controlled by her husband, Jay-Z, and with media behemoths like HBO, Disney and Netflix, Beyoncé has positioned one ambitious multimedia project after another as something to be sought out and carefully considered, rather than served up for easy access and maximum consumption.That work, and the innovative way she has released it, has helped Beyoncé skyrocket in artistic stature. Yet it has also served to distance the singer somewhat from the pop-music mainstream, siloing her material — the “Lemonade” album wasn’t widely available on major streaming platforms until three years after its initial release, while its full film is currently available only on Tidal — and potentially hamstringing her commercial performance.Beyoncé’s last No. 1 single as a lead artist, “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It),” came in late 2008. Despite the fact that her 28 Grammy Awards make her the winningest woman in music, she has not taken a trophy in a major category since 2010. Radio play for her new solo releases has dipped significantly since “4.” And while her six solo albums have all gone to No. 1, in-between projects like “Everything Is Love” (a surprise joint album with Jay-Z), the “Lion King” soundtrack and her concert album “Homecoming” have each failed to reach the top.Still, the paradox of Beyoncé has meant that even as she has slipped somewhat on the charts, her larger cultural prestige has remained supreme, driven by the mystique and grandeur she brings to each project. (“My success can’t be quantified,” she rapped on “Nice,” from 2018, sneering at the importance of “streaming numbers.”)“She’s still the leader of the culture, regardless of relatively minor data points in her world like album sales and radio play,” said Danyel Smith, the veteran music journalist and author of the recent “Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop.”“There are people that exist in this world to shift the culture, to shift the vibe,” she said in an interview. “It matters to some degree, the singles or the albums or radio play, but what really matters is that they make us look in a new direction.”From the start, however, the rollout of “Renaissance” has been different — more transparent, more conventional. Described by Beyoncé, 40, in an Instagram post last month as “a place to be free of perfectionism and overthinking,” the album is being positioned for mass consumer awareness and fan excitement, with four different boxed sets and a limited-edition vinyl version having already sold out on the singer’s website.“She and her representation are recognizing that things have changed since her last album release, and she has to go full-court press,” said Rob Jonas, the chief executive of Luminate, the music data service behind the Billboard charts.One major risk of the old-fashioned release strategy — which requires physical copies of the album to be produced far in advance — came to pass on Wednesday, when “Renaissance” appeared to leak in full online. Fan accounts on social media speculated that the early, unofficial version could have come from CDs that had been sold prematurely in Europe.Right away, Beyoncé’s famously protective base, known as the BeyHive, leaped into action, seeking to discourage early listens and band together to report those spreading the bootleg.While advance leaks of major albums were common as the CD era gave way to digital downloads, and could devastate a new album’s prospects, a crackdown on digital piracy and the shift to a streaming-first model — along with surprise releases like Beyoncé’s — have greatly reduced that threat.The last time Beyoncé suffered a major leak was with “4” in 2011, when she told listeners, “While this is not how I wanted to present my new songs, I appreciate the positive response from my fans.” (Representatives for Beyoncé and her label declined to comment on her release strategy, and did not immediately respond to questions about the leak.)Behind the scenes, the luxury of having advance notice and — hallelujah! — an early promotional single can give industry gatekeepers, like radio stations and streaming services, the runway to get themselves involved before an album’s launch.“To have anything prior to the drop is a gift,” said Michael Martin, a senior vice president of programming at Audacy, which runs more than 230 radio stations around the country. “When you have time to prepare, you can be a better marketing partner with the artist and label and management. You can have everything ready to push out at the moment the project hits the ecosystem. That’s what you want. You don’t want to scramble.”“Break My Soul,” a throwback to 1990s dance music and the first single from “Renaissance,” was released more than a month ago. With 57 million streams and 61,000 radio spins in the United States, according to Luminate, the song currently sits at No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 — its peak thus far and only the third time Beyoncé has hit the Top 10 in the last decade as a principal artist. (Her two most recent chart-toppers came as a guest: “Perfect Duet” with Ed Sheeran, in 2017, and “Savage Remix” with Megan Thee Stallion, in 2020.)Yet as with most things Beyoncé, the commercial and the artistic can work hand-in-hand. Smith said that the preparations for the release of “Renaissance” matched its teased vintage touchstones — for example, the special attention paid to the album’s elaborate vinyl packaging, which has once again become a fixture of big-tent pop releases.“Once I realized that Beyoncé was reaching back a bit, musically and artistically, with her sound and her allusions, then the rollout began to make sense to me,” Smith said. “It’s all very meta.”Another recent key development is Beyoncé’s arrival on TikTok, the home of bite-size, shareable videos that has been one of the most reliable drivers of music hits for at least three years now, as well as a go-to hype platform for younger stars like Lizzo and Cardi B.This month, Beyoncé’s official account posted its first TikToks — a montage of fans, including Cardi, dancing to “Break My Soul,” followed by the vinyl artwork reveal for “Renaissance” — and the singer recently made her entire music catalog available to score user-generated videos on the platform.Short-form videos drive “massive awareness and downstream consumption,” said Jonas, of Luminate. “We’ve got a clear line of sight on that.” Even before her participation, Beyoncé songs like “Savage Remix” and “Yoncé” thrived on TikTok.Whether or not the straightforward release of “Renaissance” represents a return to total pop domination for Beyoncé, there is still the chance that she has more moves to make. The album, after all, has been teased by the singer as “Act I,” indicating that it could be just a piece of a larger project.“It all feels a little bit too much like she’s playing by the rules right now,” Jonas said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there is some twist that we are not aware of yet.”Part of Beyoncé’s cultural mastery, Smith said, has included the ability to make herself scarce at some moments and then to once again become center of everything when she chooses. “At this point, she allows air to others, but it’s at her whim, as she sees fit,” Smith said. “Her overall impact — how she moves, what she wears — is unmatched.”She added, “I believe if Beyoncé woke up and decided, at the age of 42, 45 or 50, that she wanted to rule the culture across all data points and impact then she could — like Cher before her, like Tina Turner before her — really without breaking a sweat.” More

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      in Music

      Beach Bunny Is Building an Indie-Rock Career in a Time of TikTok

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      The singer-songwriter Lili Trifilio has had two songs connect — and get slightly misconstrued — on the app. With more ears on her band’s second album, what message will she deliver?One morning last August, Lili Trifilio was feeling emotional.“I’m honestly so nervous,” the singer-songwriter, then 24, admitted, her voice rising as she shook her head. It was the day before her indie-rock band Beach Bunny would headline a sold-out show at the Music Hall of Williamsburg in Brooklyn. Beach Bunny’s recent success had seemed abstract to Trifilio, since most of it had happened during lockdown, on the internet, but the group’s biggest New York show to date would make it tangible.“Over the pandemic, Beach Bunny has grown like 200 percent,” Trifilio continued, between sips of an iced Nutella mocha latte at a cafe not far from the venue, “and I don’t know what to expect.”Trifilio has a wide, toothy smile and a choppy bobbed haircut that she likes to dye different colors — magenta, lilac, rust — though that day it was a naturalistic blonde. Onstage, she’s known for her bubbly, earnest positivity; at a recent Beach Bunny show, she gave an enthused recommendation for a local vegan restaurant, urged the audience to get their Covid-19 booster shots and led the entire crowd in singing “Happy Birthday” to a fan. On albums she’s known for the emotional lucidity of her songwriting, which seems to trap fleeting feelings in shimmery amber.Much of the recent growth in Beach Bunny’s popularity came via “Cloud 9,” a bouncy, guitar-driven love song from the Chicago band’s February 2020 debut album, “Honeymoon,” which in March 2021 became a viral hit on TikTok. Over 360,000 videos have now used Trifilio’s lilting valentine (“But when he loves me, I feel like I’m floating/When he calls me pretty, I feel like somebody”) to soundtrack photo reels of their lovers, crushes and besties; it has racked up more than 240 million streams on Spotify.Several fans have asked Trifilio to record an acoustic version of “Cloud 9,” so they can use it as their wedding song. Trifilio finds it all a little ironic, given that she wrote it in the final days of a failing relationship.“The lyrics are so smart,” Tegan Quin of the indie-pop duo Tegan and Sara said in a phone interview, “and melodically I find all their songs to be really creative.” She and her twin sister Sara were fans before “Cloud 9” took off, but the song’s popularity provided an opportunity for them to collaborate with Beach Bunny on a new version — as requested by fans — that also features “she” and “they” pronouns.Beach Bunny’s music has plenty of admirers outside of the TikTok demographic, too. The actor Bob Odenkirk discovered the band several years ago while flipping through The Chicago Tribune, and he “immediately dug them,” he wrote in an email, because he found their sound to be “connected to the indie rock that I loved from the days of yore,” like Pixies, Sebadoh and the Cavedogs. He’s since become a vocal fan and even made a cameo in Beach Bunny’s recent “Star Wars”-spoofing video for the song “Entropy.”“I’m an older white guy, and her lyrics are about longing and written from a female perspective,” Odenkirk added. “But I still feel very connected to the pain and estrangement of my 14-year-old self, and I always will.”While the breakout of “Cloud 9” (and a prior TikTok success, “Prom Queen”) brought the band opportunities, Trifilio feared being pigeonholed or not taken seriously. “I was such a crab about it,” she said, twisting her straw. “Like I’m going to fall into this genre of internet bands. I was like, ‘No, I want to play big stages and play with bands I like, and not be thought of as cringey. I had all these weird ego dilemmas.”Perhaps to combat those fears, during the pandemic, Trifilio taught herself about music production. She watched YouTube tutorials and countless interviews with producers who inspired her, like the electro-pop star Grimes. When the band started recording its second album, “Emotional Creature,” at Chicago’s Shirk Studios last spring, she felt more empowered to experiment.“I think it’s cool that she’s an all-in-one show and does everything hands on,” Trifilio said of Grimes, citing her aggressively upbeat 2015 single “Kill V. Maim” as one of her favorite songs. “So after listening to her talk about production, going in I was like, ‘OK, I don’t really know how to do this, but can we make the beginning have this vibe? Before, I never knew to bring in those references.”That increased ambition is apparent across “Emotional Creature,” out July 22, from the bright, explosively catchy leadoff track “Entropy” to the thrilling, nearly six-minute finale, “Love Song,” which in its satisfying final moments weaves together a medley of several other songs from the album.“It still sounds like Beach Bunny,” Trifilio said, “but it just sounds a little more grown up. Which I’m happy with, because I’m growing up.”Trifilio onstage at the Music Hall of Williamsburg in August 2021. Before the show, the singer-songwriter admitted, “I’m honestly so nervous.”OK McCausland for The New York TimesTRIFILIO WAS RAISED in Chicago, and she started taking guitar lessons with a friend in fifth grade. “We did not have the attention spans for it,” she said with a laugh in a recent video interview from her childhood bedroom, where the purple walls matched her tie-dye butterfly shirt. (She moved into her own place during the pandemic, but still visits her parents frequently.) “But it was fun. That’s where I learned my basic skills. We were just like obnoxious kids, and so after a couple of years I quit because I had other things to do as a 13-year-old.”Later in her teen years, Trifilio started participating in neighborhood jam sessions and teaching herself cover songs. She has noted on Twitter, amid the occasional Hannah Montana quotation, that while journalists compare her sound to “cool” ’90s bands, her most direct influence is the pop group Aly & AJ’s 2007 album, “Insomniatic.” (I hear traces of the alt-rock mainstays Letters to Cleo and the cheery indie-pop group Velocity Girl.) When she was 18, she thought, “Well, I’ve learned a lot of covers. Let’s see if I can use this combined knowledge to write something.”The result was “6 Weeks,” a wailing, melancholic recollection of heartbreak (“Let’s begin at the end, when you tore me apart”) that she recorded on her computer with just an acoustic guitar. She presented it to her guitar-lesson friend as casually as possible: “I was like, I made this song, and I’m so embarrassed. Can you listen? I think I’m going to delete it.”Trifilio’s pal gave her a much needed confidence boost — and an ultimatum. “She was like, ‘I’m going to stop being your friend if you don’t put this out,’” Trifilio recalled. “I was like, whoa, OK. Stakes are high.”For the next few years, while she was studying journalism at DePaul University, Trifilio continued writing sharp, hooky power-pop songs and uploading them to a modest but growing online fan base. In 2017, she also started playing shows with a local group of guys — the drummer Jon Alvarado, the guitarist Matt Henkels and the bassist Aidan Cada, who was later replaced by Anthony Vaccaro — and her solo project became a proper band.Trifilio’s candid, plain-spoken lyrics often sound like internal monologues; sometimes they’re pep talks, other times they give voice to her demons. The title track from the 2018 EP “Prom Queen” straddles the line between the two. “Shut up, count your calories,” it begins over a jangly chord progression. “I never looked good in Mom jeans.” The song became one of the most downcast tracks to inspire an internet dance craze. As her anxiety builds, the song becomes a critique of aesthetic perfectionism and diet culture that Trifilio, who has admitted that she has “struggled with [her] own body image,” knows all too well.Many listeners related to Trifilio’s unabashed presentation of her insecurities. But “Prom Queen” found success on a platform that often rewards young people for adhering to the very conventions Trifilio was critiquing. Some noted the irony when the popular TikTok creator Addison Rae — the app’s honorary prom queen — posted a video of herself dancing and grinningly lip-syncing to a song that goes, “I was never cut out for Prom Queen.”TikTok can make a song incredibly popular overnight; it can also very often divorce a song, or even fragments of a song, from its larger context. Trifilio, who was not yet familiar with the app when “Prom Queen” blew up in 2019, was concerned that listeners who only heard a line or two of the song might misconstrue it as an endorsement of behavior like calorie counting. So she pinned a lengthy statement to the song’s YouTube video, clearly stating her authorial intentions.“I wrote this song for every person out there that has felt insecure, unloved, or unhappy in their own skin,” she wrote. “Please don’t harm your health or well being to live up to these invented expectations, it is not worth risking your life over.”Three years and another round of app-fueled success later, Trifilio said she’s learned to relinquish control of how her songs might be received. “You know, I use music in the same way,” she said. “I’m sure artists had different intentions than how I interpret things.” “Prom Queen,” she added, is “kind of the public’s song now.”AT A JULY 2019 show in New Mexico, Trifilio was surprised to notice a familiar face at the merch table: Odenkirk. He mentioned an upcoming audition he was preparing for, and as they parted Trifilio wished him good luck. “He spun around, gave me the finger guns, and he was like, ‘I don’t need it,’” she recalled with a laugh. “And I was like, ‘That’s right, you don’t need it!’ I need that level of confidence!’”The bold and self-assured sound of “Emotional Creature” shows how far she’s come. Sean O’Keefe, who produced the album, called her “one of the best songwriters I’ve ever gotten to work with, and I’ve been fortunate enough to work with a lot of really great songwriters.” (His credits include Fall Out Boy and Plain White T’s.)“There is definitely a young girl audience, mostly coming from TikTok, with very little experience of even attending shows,” Trifilio said of the band’s evolving crowd.Lyndon French for The New York TimesOn the new album, piercing pop-punk tunes like “Gone” and “Deadweight” challenge emotionally ambivalent partners to wear their hearts on their sleeves. “You’re a diamond/Wish you could see you the way I see,” Trifilio sings on the mid-tempo rocker “Weeds,” during a chorus that offers loving advice to a heartbroken friend — or perhaps the singer herself. Writing the album, she said, helped her to confront her history of “shame around feeling big emotions.”“That was, like, a therapy moment,” she said. “‘Wow, you have a lot of shame around being an emotional person, even though every human has feelings.”’Trifilio has since come around on TikTok, too. “There is definitely a young girl audience, mostly coming from TikTok, with very little experience of even attending shows,” she said. “They tell me, ‘This is one of my first shows,’ and I’m like, ‘That’s amazing. I hope you go to so many more.’”Such experiences seem indicative, to artists of a previous generation like Tegan and Sara, of a palpable change. “Streaming has devastated the music industry for artists, but it’s also made it really easy to be popular in corners of the industry that just didn’t exist when we were coming up,” Quin said. “Beach Bunny is an example of that. There’s just this vibrant, incredible scene flourishing around them because people can find them.”At the Brooklyn cafe, Trifilio had noted, “When I was 16, there would be some band I’d see and I’d think, ‘It would be so cool to be in a band.’” Preparing to greet some of her new fans in the flesh the following night, she added, “It’s amazing to think that someone might come to a show and maybe that inspires them to learn a Beach Bunny song on guitar. And then they learn other songs on guitar. That’s wild.” More

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      How Louis Theroux Became a ‘Jiggle Jiggle’ Sensation at Age 52

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      Decades into his career, the British American journalist has an unlikely TikTok hit that could be the song of the summer. “I am not trying to make it as a rapper,” he says.Four or five times a week these days, some old friend will contact Louis Theroux and tell him, “My daughter keeps going around the house singing your rap,” or, “My wife was exercising to your rap in her Pilates class.” Passing by a primary school, Mr. Theroux has the feeling he is being watched, a sense confirmed when he hears a kid call out behind him: “My money don’t jiggle jiggle.”His agent has been fielding dozens of requests for personal appearances and invitations to perform. Mr. Theroux, a 52-year-old British American documentary filmmaker with a bookish, somewhat anxious demeanor, has turned them all down, not least because, as he put it in a video interview from his London home, “I am not trying to make it as a rapper.”But in a way, he already has: Mr. Theroux is the man behind “Jiggle Jiggle,” a sensation on TikTok and YouTube, where it has been streamed hundreds of millions of times. He delivers the rap in an understated voice that bears traces of his Oxford education, giving an amusing lilt to the lines “My money don’t jiggle jiggle, it folds/I’d like to see you wiggle, wiggle, for sure.”For Mr. Theroux, a son of the American author Paul Theroux and a cousin of the actor Justin Theroux, the whole episode has been odd and a little unsettling. “I’m pleased that people are enjoying the rap,” he said. “At the same time, there’s a part of me that has a degree of mixed feelings. It’s a bittersweet thing to experience a breakthrough moment of virality through something that, on the face of it, seems so disposable and so out of keeping with what it is that I actually do in my work. But there we are.”The story of how this middle-aged father of three has taken hold of youth culture with a novelty rap is “a baffling 21st century example of just the weirdness of the world that we live in,” Mr. Theroux said.“Jiggle Jiggle” gestated for years before it became all the rage. It started in 2000, when Mr. Theroux was hosting “Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekends,” a BBC Two series in which he delved into various subcultures. For an episode in the third and final season, he traveled to the American South, where he met a number of rappers, including Master P. As part of the show, he decided to do a rap himself, but he had only a few meager lines: “Jiggle Jiggle/I love it when you wiggle/It makes me want to dribble/Fancy a fiddle?”Mr. Theroux with the rapper Master P. in a 2000 episode of the BBC Two series “Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekends.”BBC TwoHe enlisted Reese & Bigalow, a rap duo in Jackson, Miss., to help him work it into shape. Bigalow cleaned up the opening lines and linked the word “jiggle” with the word “jingle” to suggest the sound of coins in your pocket. Reese asked him what kind of car he drove. His reply — Fiat Tipo — led to the lines, “Riding in my Fiat/You really have to see it/Six-feet-two in a compact/No slack but luckily the seats go back.”“Reese & Bigalow infused the rap with a genuine quality,” Mr. Theroux said. “The elements that make it special, I could never have written on my own. At the risk of overanalyzing it, the genius part of it, in my mind, was saying, ‘My money don’t jiggle jiggle, it folds.’ There was something very satisfying about the cadence of those words.”He filmed himself performing the song live on the New Orleans hip-hop station Q93, and BBC viewers witnessed his rap debut when the episode aired in the fall of 2000. That might have been the end of “Jiggle Jiggle” — but “Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekends” got new life in 2016, when Netflix licensed the show and started streaming it on Netflix UK. The rap episode became a favorite, and whenever Mr. Theroux made the publicity rounds for a new project, interviewers would inevitably ask him about his hip-hop foray.In February of this year, while promoting a new show, “Louis Theroux’s Forbidden America,” Mr. Theroux sat down for an interview on the popular web talk show “Chicken Shop Date,” hosted by the London comedian Amelia Dimoldenberg.“Can you remember any of the rap that you did?” Ms. Dimoldenberg asked, prompting Mr. Theroux to launch into his rhymes in what he described as “my slightly po-faced and dry English delivery.”“What happened subsequently is the most mystifying part,” he added.Mr. Theroux’s February appearance on “Chicken Shop Date,” a popular British web series, kicked off new interest in his 22-year-old rap song.Chicken Shop DateLuke Conibear and Isaac McKelvey, a pair of DJ-producers in Manchester, England, known as Duke & Jones, plucked the audio from “Chicken Shop Date” and set it to a backing track with an easygoing beat. Then they uploaded the song to their YouTube account, where it has 12 million views and counting.But “Jiggle Jiggle” became a phenomenon thanks largely to Jess Qualter and Brooke Blewitt, 21-year-old graduates of Laine Theater Arts, a performing arts college in Surrey, England. In April, the two friends were making pasta at their shared apartment when they heard the song and hastily choreographed moves suited to the track — dribbling a basketball, turning a steering wheel — and the “Jiggle Jiggle” dance was born.Wearing hooded sweatshirts and shades (an outfit chosen because they weren’t wearing makeup, the women said in an interview), Ms. Qualter and Ms. Blewitt made a 27-second video of themselves performing the routine. It blew up shortly after Ms. Qualter posted it on TikTok. Copycat videos soon sprang up from TikTok users around the world.“This was all going on without me knowing about it,” Mr. Theroux said. “I got an email: ‘Hey, a remix of the rap you did on “Chicken Shop Date” is going viral and doing extraordinary things on TikTok.’ I’m, like, ‘Well, that’s funny and weird.’”It bursted out of TikTok and into the mainstream last month, when Shakira performed the “Jiggle Jiggle” dance on NBC’s “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.” Snoop Dogg, Megan Thee Stallion and Rita Ora have all posted themselves dancing to it. The cast of Downton Abbey jiggle-jiggled during a red carpet event.“Anthony Hopkins has just done a thing yesterday,” Mr. Theroux said. “It would be too much to call it a dance. It’s more of a twitch. But he’s doing something.”The whole episode has been strange for his three children, especially his 14-year-old son, who is big into TikTok. “‘Why is my dad, the most cringe guy in the universe, everywhere on TikTok?’” Mr. Theroux said, giving voice to his son’s reaction.“I’ve left my stank all over his timeline,” he continued. “I think it’s made him very confused and slightly resentful.”Mr. Theroux said he doesn’t know what to do with his newfound social media fame. “It’s not like I have a catalog and, like, now I can release all of my other novelty rap fragments,” he said.Alexander Coggin for The New York TimesMs. Qualter and Ms. Blewitt find it equally surreal to see Shakira and others dancing to their moves. “I almost forget that we made that up,” Ms. Qualter said. “It doesn’t feel like it’s happened. It’s got over 60 million views. We see the number on the screen, but I can’t comprehend that there are people behind it.”After the original Duke & Jones remix went viral — that is, the one with the vocal track taken from “Chicken Shop Date” — the DJ-producer duo asked Mr. Theroux to redo his vocal in a recording studio. That way, instead of being just another TikTok ear-worm, “Jiggle Jiggle” could be made available on Spotify, iTunes and other platforms, and its makers could gain some exposure and profit from it.In addition to Mr. Theroux, five composers are credited on the official release: Duke & Jones; Reese & Bigalow; and the 81-year-old hitmaker Neil Diamond. Mr. Diamond became part of the crew when his representatives signed off on “Jiggle Jiggle,” which echoes his 1967 song “Red Red Wine” in the part where Mr. Theroux’s Auto-tuned voice sings the words “red, red wine.” The song hit the Spotify viral charts globally last month.So does this mean real money?“I sincerely hope we can all make some jiggle jiggle out of the phenomenon. Or maybe some fold,” Mr. Theroux said. “So far, it’s been more on the jiggle end.”In his career as a documentary filmmaker, Mr. Theroux has explored the worlds of male porn stars, the Church of Scientology, right-wing militia groups, and opioid addicts. In his new BBC series, “Forbidden America,” Mr. Theroux examines the effects of social media on the entertainment industry and politics. Years before Netflix had a hit show centered on Joseph Maldonado-Passage, who is better known as the Tiger King, Mr. Theroux made a film about him. The American documentarian John Wilson, the creator and star of HBO’s “How To With John Wilson,” has cited him as an influence.Now his body of work has been eclipsed, at least temporarily, by “Jiggle Jiggle.” And like many who go viral, Mr. Theroux finds himself trying to understand what just happened and figure out what he’s supposed to do with this newfound cultural capital.“It’s not like I have a catalog and, like, now I can release all of my other novelty rap fragments,” he said. “I’m clearly not going to tour it. ‘Come see Mr. Jiggle himself.’ It would be a 20-second-long gig.” More

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      in Music

      Mailbag Madness: Adele, Jack Harlow, the State of Rock’s Return

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherEvery few months, members of The New York Times pop music team gather for the ritual Popcast mailbag.On this week’s episode, we answer questions about the current state of rock music, including recent revivals of emo and hardcore; the status of Adele and Chance the Rapper’s careers; the degree to which critics consider extramusical concerns when assessing work; rising talents including Rina Sawayama and Yeat; and much, much more.Guests:Joe Coscarelli, The New York Times’s pop music reporterCaryn Ganz, The New York Times’s pop music editorJon Pareles, The New York Times’s chief pop music criticConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      in Theater

      With Cameras on Every Phone, Will Broadway’s Nude Scenes Survive?

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      Audiences are increasingly asked to lock their phones in pouches at comedy shows, concerts and some plays. But what happens onstage doesn’t always stay onstage.Jesse Williams was nominated for a Tony Award last month for his work in “Take Me Out,” an acclaimed play about baseball and homophobia. But when his name trended on Twitter the next day, it was not because of the accolade: it was because someone had surreptitiously taken a video of his nude scene and posted it online.In a recent interview Mr. Williams, who became a star through his appearances on “Grey’s Anatomy,” said he was undeterred by the incident. “I come here to do work — I’m going to tell the truth onstage, I’m going to be vulnerable,” he said. But he also made it clear that he was not all right with what had happened to him, saying that “putting nonconsensual naked photos of somebody on the internet is really foul.”Mobile phones have long disrupted live performances by ringing at inopportune moments, and have irked artists when people use them to illicitly film their work. Now the ubiquity of smartphones with ever-better cameras is leading some actors, particularly celebrities, to reconsider whether to appear nude onstage, given the risk that what is intended as an ephemeral moment can live online forever, out of context.“Ten years ago, I don’t think the first thing out of my mouth would have been: ‘Are you OK knowing that there is a decent chance that this will be filmed or photographed and be out there on social media?’” Lisa Goldberg, a publicist who represents actors in Broadway, television and film, said of the discussions she has when a performer is asked to appear nude. “That would be one of the first things I would bring up to a client today.”Jesse Williams, right, said “putting nonconsensual naked photos of somebody on the internet is really foul.” He appeared in “Take Me Out” with Carl Lundstedt.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesNudity has grown common onstage over the past 50 years, and major stars including Nicole Kidman and Daniel Radcliffe have performed scenes without clothes on Broadway when their scripts have called for it. But the chances of being photographed au naturel have grown considerably. Being Broadway royalty offers no protection: Audra McDonald, who has won six Tonys, noticed in 2019 that someone had snapped a photo of her during a nude scene from “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune.” “Not cool at all,” she wrote in a tweet.The recent videos of Mr. Williams surfaced despite the extraordinary steps that Second Stage Theater, the producer of “Take Me Out,” has taken to protect the privacy of the actors who appear nude. Audience members are required to switch off their phones and place them in pouches that are kept locked until the end of the show. The pouches, made by a company called Yondr, have grown increasingly common in recent years, especially at stand-up shows, since comedians are both fiercely protective of their jokes and concerned that some, taken out of context, could cause blowback.Roughly a million Yondr pouches were used at live events in April, nearly five times as many as were used the same month in 2019, the company said. Other shows with nude scenes are now trying them: At the end of May, Penguin Rep Theatre announced that it would deploy Yondr pouches at its upcoming Off Broadway production of “Mr. Parker” because the show contains a brief moment of nudity.Graham Dugoni, who founded Yondr in 2014, lamented that many people still have difficulty figuring out how to “be a human in the world with a computer in your pocket.”“A nude photograph is obviously one very far extreme,” Mr. Dugoni said. “But a comedian’s bit being taken out of context and repackaged on social media and reinterpreted — all of these things don’t enhance the art form. They kind of nibble away at it in a way that makes people go into hedgehog mode.”But the precautions are not foolproof. A night of comedy at the Hollywood Bowl last month was supposed to have been cellphone free, but when its headliner, Dave Chappelle, was tackled onstage, video emerged from a few people who had managed to skirt the rules. And earlier this spring, when Chris Rock had his first public stand-up set after Will Smith slapped him onstage at the Academy Awards, attendees at the Wilbur Theater in Boston were required to put their phones in Yondr pouches, too. They were only allowed to use them in a designated space near the lobby, where one ticketholder sheepishly asked for his phone back because he had forgotten to text the babysitter. Video of that show emerged, too.The ease of recording and uploading video has given pause to people thinking of disrobing in other situations, including some college students who have reassessed the wisdom of traditional naked campus runs and habitués of nude beaches, who are increasingly on the lookout for cameras. But it is becoming a particular issue in the theater, where actors who are asked to appear nude must consent to it when they sign their contracts.Many major stars have appeared nude on Broadway over the years, including Daniel Radcliffe, center, in “Equus” in 2008.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesKate Shindle, the president of Actors’ Equity Association, said in an interview that many actors believe that live theater is “meant to be participated in within four walls” and that “if that sanctity is compromised, the work suffers.” Recording from the audience, she said, can feel “like a violation — even if you have all your clothes on.”Advanced written consent is required for any filming or photography that involves nudity, union officials said. That includes any video that will appear in Theater on Film and Tape Archive at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, said Patrick Hoffman, the director and curator of the archive, which holds more than 4,400 video recordings of live theater productions. Most agree. But over the years, some actors have declined to have their nude scenes recorded for the archive. In some cases understudies have gone on in their places, and in others, their productions have simply not been recorded. Some videos of shows featuring nudity in the archive are specially formatted so researchers can watch them, but cannot pause, rewind, or fast forward.Surreptitious photography posed a challenge to actors appearing nude onstage long before the iPhone debuted in 2007.The theater environment today, where nudity is a regular feature on Broadway and even in some productions at the Metropolitan Opera, is a far cry from what it was like in 1969, when Margo Sappington, the choreographer and a cast member of the original production of “Oh! Calcutta!,” which featured extensive nudity, was among those arrested on charges of indecent exposure after a performance in Los Angeles.Even in that pre-smartphone era, cameras were a nuisance, Ms. Sappington said. So the company decided on a low-tech mitigation measure: If someone spotted a camera from the stage, they would stop the show, break the fourth wall, and call for the ushers.“Now it’s impossible in a Broadway theater in the dark to see cellphones,” she said. “People are so disrespectful. It amazes me.”And the leak of the video featuring Mr. Williams had an all-too-familiar feeling for Daniel Sunjata, who played the same character, Darren Lemming, when “Take Me Out” first ran on Broadway in 2003. Photos of his nude scenes leaked too, but were somewhat more contained in the era before Facebook and Twitter made social media so pervasive.“The main difference between now and then is amplitude,” Mr. Sunjata said, “the speed, the rapidity with which things like this can be spread.”But the leaks troubled Mr. Sunjata, who had found the nude scenes a challenge to begin with. He said he consulted his lawyers and had “wanted heads to roll.”Tatianna Casas, who works for Yondr, helped people seal their phones before a recent comedy show.Calla Kessler for The New York TimesFor Mr. Sunjata, the main difference between performing naked onstage eight times a week before a live audience, and having a photo taken of the nudity, is less about the photo’s permanence then about the lack of context surrounding it. “Someone who hasn’t seen the play just sees naked guys onstage,” he said.The current revival of “Take Me Out” has taken further steps to keep people from filming its actors. As a backup to the Yondr pouches, Second Stage Theater has installed an infrared camera with the ability to pan, tilt and zoom so that security officials can see if any members of the audience are trying to film the nude scenes.At a performance of the play last month, two theater staff members were stationed at the front of the theater at either end of the stage. They stood up during scenes that included nudity. For all the precautions, a phone rang five minutes into the first act. The crowd audibly groaned.When Mr. Williams was asked whether he would sign up again for a show in which he must appear nude, he demurred. “I don’t know,” he said. “My reaction is never as hot, or loud or miserable as everybody expects it to be.”Michael Paulson and Julia Jacobs contributed reporting. Sheelagh McNeill and Alain Delaquérière contributed research. More

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      in Music

      The Colorful Mozart of Gen Z

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      Jacob Collier, the singer, songwriter and composer, who fancies crayon colors, clashing patterns and tie-dyed Crocs, doesn’t fit easily into any box. He’s OK with that.Jacob Collier was about to cross Fifth Avenue when a stranger stopped him to take a picture of his outfit. A Grammy-winning musician with millions of followers across YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, Mr. Collier is used to requests for pictures, but it was a nice change of pace to be asked because someone liked what he was wearing — a color-blocked jacket, acid-green patterned pants and tie-dyed Crocs — rather than because they recognized him from the internet.“I was always curious how someone would perceive me from a fashion perspective because I’ve never really perceived myself that way,” he said later from his perch on a rock in Central Park, where he spent a sunny afternoon between shows on his “Djesse” world tour. “I’ve never overly contrived it. I’ve gone for things I like that are comfortable and expressive, and that’s about it.”Following his artistic instincts has served the 27-year-old Brit well, turning him into an internet-age success story. As a teenager, his videos of multi-instrumental covers of classic songs went viral on YouTube, earning him professional representation. Since then, Mr. Collier has won five Grammys and been nominated for four more. He is commonly described as a genius by fellow musicians, and the list of his admirers is long: Coldplay and Lizzo are fans; Hans Zimmer called Mr. Collier his “hero”; and SZA said she “stalked” him on Instagram until she convinced him to collaborate with her.That Mr. Collier attracts admirers from across so many genres is a testament to the uncategorizable nature of his music, which contains elements from jazz, folk, R&B and classical. His songs often comprise hundreds of tracks layered over one another, in which he plays and sings every sound. He recently attempted to translate this enjoyment of complexity into the visual realm by using the music software Logic to color-code the hundreds of tracks that went into his arrangement of “The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire).” He printed the resulting pattern on a pair of pants in collaboration with the brand Skidz.“I find myself gravitating toward things that are highly patterned, because I’m quite highly pattern-minded,” he said. “Musically, I enjoy that exploration, and visually I think it follows suit.”Mr. Collier in Central Park in May.Isak Tiner for The New York TimesThrough it all, Mr. Collier’s look has remained remarkably homegrown. That’s not to say it’s tame: His wardrobe is wild and high-energy, full of crayon colors, power-clashing patterns and the occasional alligator onesie, paralleling the eclecticism of his whimsical and energetic soundscapes. But whereas many of his peers present a version of themselves to the world that has been polished by a team of professional image-makers, Mr. Collier has, for the better part of 10 years in the public eye, done his own thing. Until a few months ago, he’d never worked with a stylist. His biggest red carpet moment — when he wore a hot pink Stella McCartney suit to the 2021 Grammys (and promptly spilled ketchup on it, he divulged) — was a result of the brand reaching out to him directly.“You can tell when someone’s covering themselves up, and you can tell when someone is pulling things out from deeper within using clothes and colors,” Mr. Collier said. “That’s what I try to aim for.”Mr. Collier performing at Brooklyn Steel in May.Isak Tiner for The New York TimesAt his first of three “Djesse” shows in New York, that meant bounding joyously across the stage in lime-green corduroy pants from an upstart brand called Fried Rice and a shirt made of upcycled bandannas from Rcnstrct Studio. He went shoeless in mismatched socks, as is his custom when performing, partly because he uses his toes to play a bespoke instrument and partly because he likes feeling “grounded and in my body.” When he does wear shoes, they’re usually Crocs, because they remind him of the house where he has lived his whole life and recorded most of his music. (“Everyone in my family wears them,” he said.)Almost all of his signature wardrobe items are like that: If you ask him what he’s wearing, he’ll tell you about a relationship with someone he loves.The pair of patterned harem pants he wore to every show of his first tour, which started in 2015 and lasted for two years, came about when he tried on a pair of his sister’s. (Having grown up in a house full of women, he said, “I don’t think of clothes as having a gender.”)The T-shirt that he wore almost every night of that first tour also points to a major pillar of the Collier style philosophy in that it was handmade by a fan.“Fans like to give me things, and it has really sustained my fashion diet over the years,” he said. When he rifles through the suitcase that serves as his tour wardrobe, fan-made pieces abound: There’s a tie-dyed hoodie, a knit hat and a patchwork kimono embroidered with a “JC” logo. As an artist known for collaborating with his listeners — Mr. Collier regularly conducts live concert audiences as though they’re choirs and digitally duets submissions from followers on YouTube and TikTok — wearing pieces made by his fans allows him to feel as if he’s speaking “the same language,” musically and sartorially.Mr. Collier at Room 57 Gallery in New York.Isak Tiner for The New York TimesBut just as his musical trajectory started with him making songs alone in his room and has expanded to feature collaborations with world-class artists, he has recently decided it’s time to enlist others to help him with his look. Mr. Collier is working on a currently-under-wraps collaboration with an international brand that will be introduced later this year. And for the “Djesse” tour, he worked with the stylist Marta del Rio, who also creates looks for Lady Gaga, Billie Eilish and Tinashe, on his performance wardrobe.“He’s so advanced in his musical maturity, but he’s just starting to experiment with fashion,” Ms. del Rio said. “He communicates joyfulness and enjoyment, and we wanted to maintain that essence with the clothes.”At the beginning of their working relationship, Mr. Collier had a conversation with Ms. del Rio about sustainability in fashion, which he described as “a world full of possibilities to explore” that he is in some ways “just waking up to.” A onetime member of his school’s environmental club, Mr. Collier has started introducing climate awareness into his music-making process. He recently installed solar panels to power his music room, and he’s donating roughly 10 percent of net profits from merchandise sales on his current tour to Earth Percent, a nonprofit that raises funds for climate action.Mr. Collier’s most responsible dressing habit, though, is one that sets him apart from many of his social media-raised peers. While many young creatives associate self-expression with never being seen online wearing the same thing twice, he frequently wears his clothes again and again. A beloved striped Missoni knit, for example, appears in multiple music videos, at press events and in home videos.“I just really like it and wear it all the time,” he said, nodding at a group of street musicians whose eyes lit up in recognition as he walked by. “It’s a simple thing, but a lot of my friends and people in the industry will do something new for every show and event.”Though some of Mr. Collier’s fans have expressed a desire to imitate his look — there are Instagram accounts and Reddit threads devoted to documenting his style and parsing where to shop for pieces like his — he’s happy that his first concert in New York was attended by a crowd whose garb mostly didn’t mirror his own. More than anything, he said, he wants to inspire people to be their truest selves.“Certain people will wear a hat that looks like mine or something, but I get much more excited about people being really expressive as to who they are,” he said. “I love seeing people be themselves. I don’t want people to be like me. I want people to be like them. It’s that permission-giving that means the most.” More