Friday, March 27, 2020

I'll make a cup of coffee for your head

As is probably obvious from some of the stuff I've posted on this blog, I'm old and don't always understand new and interesting things.  For example...TikTok.

As you may know because you're more capable of absorbing the nuances of an ever-changing world than I am, TikTok is a new social media platform built on videos of 15 seconds or less.  My wife loves it.  My coworkers love it.  It's hilarious.  You can spend hours scrolling through it.

I just don't get it.  Maybe I just haven't seen the right stuff yet.  The percentage of of videos that are interesting seems far too low to make it worth the effort.  But...again, I suppose I just don't get it.


Okay, so...there is this one song that I kept hearing my wife come across on the app, and it kept sticking with me.  Quite an earworm, really, especially for what is essentially just the melodic hook for a lofi hip hop song.  All I had to use in searching for it were the lyrics "I'll make a cup of coffee for your head" and the fact that it's used a lot on TikTok.  This was more than enough, and there's a nice little history to the song, but I didn't find it gathered all in one place for easy access.  So, that's what this page is for...the person like me who wants to know what's behind the tune but doesn't know where to start.

First off, here's the song that's being used, "death bed" by Canadian rapper Powfu, sampling the song "Coffee" by Filipino-British singer-songwriter Beeabadoobee:


Here's a selection of TikTok videos (I guess they're called TikToks...? maybe...?) that use it.  FAIR WARNING:  I don't necessarily recommend watching this entire video as a good use of your time.  However, to reiterate, I just don't get it...but oh man I just found myself watching one after the other and maybe I'm starting to get it...


Powfu first released the song in 2019, putting it on SoundCloud.  In 2020, it started getting used a ton on TikTok and was finally released commercially (I guess in that order).  Powfu apparently waited because he didn't think he could legally use the Beabadoobee sample in the beat, which he had found on SoundCloud from producer Otterpop.  Here's that beat:


This backing track, entitled "Don't Go to Bed/One Day I'll Be Fine," is also used in rapper Kalvonix's song "One Day I'll Be Fine," which seems to have already been released in 2018...so I guess it predates "death bed?"


Now, that hook.  It's a slightly sped up (and higher pitched) clip from Beeabadoobee's 2017 song "Coffee," which is beautiful:


Here's a fun live version:


Finally, if you'd like to hear more from Powfu about his thoughts on the song...here you go...


4 comments:

  1. Haven't tried tiktok yet, but for awhile I watched something called Coub. Similar concept. Dumb little videos set to music that loop. A few were cool or funny... but I was mostly watching it for the boobs.

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    1. I don't think I've ever even heard of Coub. I wonder what it is that makes some of these platforms practically essential and some forgotten. I would have thought boobs would be a pretty solid shtick.

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  2. Thanks.. it had stuck in my head, and thought the lyrics were quite odd.. but catchy none the less! I googled exactly that.. coffee for your head! Interesting background!!

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    1. I'm glad you found it helpful...thank you for letting me know how you came across it!

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