Amidst the tough times, a 90-second TikTok video of three women expressing vocally how they felt about this turbulent year started doing the rounds on internet, at the end of June.The tune is sourced from a trio of 22-year-olds — Sam Backoff, Savana Santos, and Sami Bearden — from Quincy, Illinois, who have formed a band together called Avenue Beat since they were tiny 14 years old.
The group, which started for Mason Ramsey last year, told BuzzFeed News that the moment they staged the song for their TikTok video “F*ck Off 2020”, they had penned nothing more than 90 seconds and they only determined to complete it when it started receiving heaps of praises.
“We were just having a week and everything that could go wrong was going wrong,” said Santos, “and I remember sitting on my couch just being like, You know what? I need to write a song about this.”
The reason they released the song on TikTok because they assumed no one would permit them to release the song elsewhere as it included tons of swearing in it. “It’ll live on TikTok,” said Bearden.
The song, since it related to the emotional state of many, went viral with 4.5 million views, exactly at the point TikTok temporarily took it down for review. (The group appealed and it was later reinstated.)
With netizens going crazy over the first verse of the song, writing the second verse took them about an hour and a half, they said.
“When it started blowing up,” said Santos, “everyone started hitting us up like, ‘You have to finish this today!’ and we were screaming.”
“We quickly tried to finish it as fast as we could.”
Meanwhile, a Twitter user downloaded the video and shared it there, raking in another 3 million views.
The video touched the heartstrings of several people not just because of how all the cuss words seemed relatable to the current situation, but also because of the backdrop of the video in the TikTok. There are snaps focusing the Australian fires, police brutality incidents in the US, the postponed Tokyo Olympics, President Trump, and more.
People have described the song as a jive with netizens finding the bleak lyrics and footage extremely relatable amid this dire year.
This is lowkey a bop? pic.twitter.com/zjgTemfdEU
— Lip Gloss Queen (@Wrapfiqah_) June 29, 2020
Sometimes it’s hard to call the song of the year half way through and sometimes it’s not @TheAvenueBeat pic.twitter.com/pQTURFNXXO
— Matthew Panzarino (@panzer) June 28, 2020
me bopping along while scared of what the second half of 2020 has in store for us pic.twitter.com/2CzYBWydSa
— k*ren says fuck 2020 (@_rmseht) June 30, 2020
The group felt grateful for their little joke turned into something light-hearted and fun for so many people during this rough year.
“We’re so so thankful we get to put this out,” Backoff said. “Without the people liking it and blowing it up, never in a million years would we be able to convince our team to release it.””