What is nightcore music? How this TikTok trend is changing the way music is released
It all started with a school project in Norway in the noughties. (Supplied/ABC Everyday: Christian Harimanow)
If you spend any time on TikTok, you've probably heard snippets of songs that sound like an alien consuming helium. This is called "nightcore" music and it's only getting more popular.
Nightcore is also known simply as sped-up music and, you guessed it, refers to music that is sped up — by 35 per cent or so, giving it the appearance of playing a 33⅓-RPM vinyl record at 45 RPM.
And it all started with a Norwegian school project way back in 2002.
Why speed up music?
Back in those hazy days of the early naughties, Thomas S. Nilsen and Steffen Ojala Soderholm started playing around with song tempo.
According to a New York Times interview, their school project involved them remixing other people's songs by changing the tempo, resulting in a much lighter tone.
They called it cheerful hardcore music — because they remixed sad or heavier songs to make them pleasant — and they called their DJ duo Nightcore.
Even thought their side-hustle wrapped up not long after, speeding up songs took off in 2009, after an Amsterdam software developer called Maikel631 posted some of the duo's tunes from LimeWire to Youtube. As enthusiasm grew, other people started to make their own "nightcore" music.
The DJ pair stumbled upon the scene in 2011 and were astonished and proud that their project had now influenced so many other remixes.
Vanessa Thaler, social media manager at a digital marketing agency in Sydney, says it offers something new.
"It's a great way to grab somebody's attention because you get immediately sucked in," she says.
"And [you] don't have the time to think about it."
Short and fast
TikTok is all about pace — the most popular videos are usually short and fast, with users swiping rapid-fire through them.
That might be why fast-paced music seems to suit the platform so well.
The hashtag #spedupsongs has 11.2 billion views on TikTok and #speedupsongs has 12.9 billion.
New releases have been given a boost, with sped up versions of songs like Greedy by Tate McRae, IT GIRL by Aliyah's Interlude and Strangers by Kenya Grace dominating TikTok's playlists and trends.
Antonia Gauci, a Sydney-based engineer, mixer, producer and artist says it's helped songs reach new audiences.
"People ask for the name of a sped up song and look for the original version and then it will get millions of streams on Spotify," she says.
"That money goes back into the pockets of the artists, which is fantastic."
Bringing new life to old songs
And it's helping boost older or forgotten songs, too.
A couple of months ago, TikTok users may have had the refrain "I wanna dance dance dance with my hands hands hands…" on a loop in their heads.
It comes from the 2011 song Bloody Mary by Lady Gaga, which never hit the charts when it was originally released.
But when people started to emulate the unique dance style of Wednesday (as seen on the Netflix Addams-Family spin-off) to a sped up version of the song, it hit the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time.
The dance was actually set to an entirely different song in the show (Goo Goo Muck by The Cramps), but Netflix didn't care and happily jumped on the bandwagon, using Gaga's sped up song to announce that the show would return for a second season.
Promiscuous by Nelly Furtado (2006), Obsessed by Mariah Carey (2009) and The Boy Is Mine by Brandy and Monica (1998!) have also been repopularised on TikTok through nightcore versions of the songs.
"It's a wonderful thing because the music is getting recognition," says Hannah Balanay, an Australian TikTok creator and dancer with 18 million followers.
"Whether it's slowed down or sped up; it's still the same song."
What does this mean for musicians?
Nightcore has not escaped the attention of musicians, and many have capitalised on the trends themselves, re-recording or re-releasing tracks that have been popular on TikTok.
Summer Walker re-released her 2018 mixtape Last Day of Summer with all the songs sped up.
Steve Lacy's song Bad Habit debuted at the end of June in 2022. He released the sped up version at the end of September, and the track climbed to number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in October after receiving TikTok exposure. After 15 weeks, the song became the fourth longest-running number 1 song in Billboard Hot 100 history.
And giving early 2000s flashbacks, musicians like Doja Cat are releasing singles with multiple versions of the original.
Multiple remixes of one song — have we travelled back to 2001? (Spotify)
Whether or not you're into the chipmunk-having-a-heart-attack vibe, it's obvious the Norwegians were onto something all those years ago: speeding up music has transformed how people enjoy their favourite songs.
And as the trends change quickly, each new song variation creates a memorable impression for fans.
Ajok Theip Dor is a Western Sydney University student journalist from Sydney, Australia. She is in her final year of studies for a bachelor's degree in Creative Industries with a major in journalism.