Why on Earth do I Just Wanna Be Part Of Your Symphony?

During this year’s charity week, I had the pleasure of supervising our fantastic Young Reporters Team as they covered the Student Talent Show. I was initially hesitant to attend due to the hefty amount English Coursework I had due that afternoon, but I resolved to print out a draft and make some notes in between the performances. This was working well - aside from the occasional comment with my friends sitting either side of me, or suggestion to my reporting crew, I was able to keep my head down and make some solid progress on reducing my word count.

My focus was interrupted, however, with the arrival on stage of Miranda Cerrito, Grace Turvill, and Afryea Omonoseh, singing ‘Symphony’ by Clean Bandit and Zara Larsson. This made the crowd go absolutely wild, which came as no shock to me; the chorus was marked by 100 or so students on their feet, screaming the lyrics and filling the hall with an energy that resonated all the way through the A-Block long after lunchtime had ended. You can understand my surprise, then, when my good friend (and SOCIAL EDITOR) Ben Barrett turned to me mid-performance (after some of the screaming had dipped in order to listen to the singing on display) and asked, “Why is everyone really into this song?”

To me, this was an unfathomable question. Despite being constantly mocked by my friends for refusing to download TikTok - and instead getting my knowledge of trends through Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts - I had somehow become privy to a trend that my friends had failed to see. As I frantically tried to explain the trend post-performance and was simply met with blank stares, I realised that what I was attempting to conceptualise was, indeed, quite absurd.

So why on earth was a silly, nihilistic and extinction-imminent meme able to evoke and sustain such a reaction? I am attempting to find out:

Why on Earth do I just wanna be part of your symphony??

In August 2024, creator @heiratet made a viral meme on TikTok featuring the painting "Enjoy Sunshine" by Christian Riese Lassen overlayed by a contrasting caption reading "I have depression", underscored by - you guessed it - 'Symphony'. Users found irony in the image, and it began to reflect an existential feeling garnered in modern generations of trying to stay positive and 'whimsical' despite overwhelming political and economic chaos. Fully understanding whimsy's political connotation "defies its character as frivolous and without motive", but Joanna Mann, whilst discussing 30 yarn bombs placed around Bristol in 2011, claims that whimsy can "increase our attentiveness to habitual worlds in a series of micro-political gestures". In creating this meme, heiratet inadvertently drew attention to the horrors of the current political landscape through dolphins and Clean Bandit. Adam Aleksic, who goes by @etymologynerd on social media, calls this sub-genre "hopelesscore".

After its conception, the video then became extortionately popular, and this would have been due to a multitude of reasons; TikTok's algorithm pushing videos based on engagement rather than follower count; its prioritisation of short-form, digestible content; and, most importantly to our case study, a community-driven focus - the formation of a digital "inside joke" which, as Ben Howard argues in "How To Spot Trends Early and Go Viral on TikTok", allows users to participate further than liking a video by recreating or building on the original video. This was seen recently in the Josh Hutcherson 'whistle' trend, which saw users attempting to hide Josh Hutcherson within their videos, in order to reveal it in a 'Rickroll'-esque twist.

Larsson eventually reacted to the trend, posting a TikTok video with the same painting with the text, reading: "What the f*ck is happening". Oftentimes, acknowledgement and participation in the trend by the original subject can kill a joke, but this only added fuel to the fire. Clean Bandit also responded to the meme, calling it "inspiring", and the song peaked in the Billboard charts once again.

Despite the inherent appeal of the video we discussed previously, Adam Aleksic very concisely explains that "at a certain point, they only become popular because they're already popular". Aleksic gained notoriety for discussing 'Algospeak' (how social media is transforming the future of language), and he claims that a internet media follows a cycle where a cultural force (the "thesis") is confronted by a countercultural force (the "antithesis"). Over time, these merge into a new form of media (the "synthesis"), which takes the place of the thesis to be confronted by a never ending cycle of antitheses.

This can be applied to our case study: 'hopelesscore' began as a reactionary trend mocking 'hopecore' - a format that is recognisable, as it utilises a heartwarming video overlayed by encouraging text. The reactionary force, trying to teach us something, is quickly commercialised, killing the resonance people found with a trend that was "raw" and "genuine".

To conclude, we want to be part of the Symphony because we sympathise with it. Symphony itself comes from the words 'harmony' and 'concord', and for a brief period, TikTok was able to unite around "hopelesscore" in an attempt to find refuge from a rapidly transforming political lanscape. The videos, however, possessed all markers of those before them, and continued down the same path to commercialisation that all earnest trends are destined to take.