Isabel LaRosa is a Cuban singer-songwriter who found fame through social media, predominantly through short-form content on TikTok and Instagram. She has been creating music for the past four years, but became more well-known when she released her single “I’m Yours” in 2022. Short-form content can be very beneficial to small artists and creators; however, the question has to be asked. Is short-form content, “painting the cultural river black”?
In Culture Care, Fujimura mentions that in the mid-twentieth century, the Hudson River turned black due to the increase in industry. He mentions how many people viewed it as a good thing because that meant New York was a city full of industry and money. Fujimura then ties the black river back to today and our so-called “culture river”. He says that we “value repetitive, machine-like performance as critical to bottom-line success.”
An artist like Isabel LaRosa, who became well known because of short-form content, may be contributing to the hypothetical river. In an interview, it states that, “When she’s writing – always as part of a collaboration with her producer and older brother, Thomas – it’s with those few precious TikTok seconds in mind. ‘You wanna write the punchline, and then write the rest of the joke, you know?’ she quips.” This mindset can be very beneficial for the artists, especially in the short term, but eventually it will become hurtful for the industry and the audience. Social media has become much more about grabbing people's attention for thirty seconds, so it has become less about the long-lasting effect it has on the audience and more about the number of people seeing it.
LaRosa is still a very talented artist and singer. She knows how to utilize her resources, through TikTok and Instagram, in order for people to connect and find her music. Fujimura states that, “many in our culture no longer value a bouquet of flowers because beauty contributes neither to the machinery of production nor to an advantage in the latest cultural battle”. Social media is never going to go away, so the next time we see an artist on social media, we need to remember the creative process that they went through and not let the cultural river turn black.
Read more about Isabel LaRosa and her creative process:
https://diymag.com/interview/isabel-larosa-muse
https://www.teenvogue.com/story/isabel-larosa-psychopomp-tour-snapshot-style-interview-2025
In listening to Isabel LaRosa's music, it is sometimes disheartening to catch on to parts of the song that are clearly intended to be viral TikTok sounds. It's especially difficult because Isabel LaRosa is clearly a talented artist with a dreamy, airy sound that is very appealing to a lot of people, but she knows it is best to cater to those small seconds that will grant her the most fame. It's reasonable for her to want to make a name for herself, as the success of an artist's music does determine if they can make a living out of it, so I honestly think her approach to songwriting may simply be a natural evolution of an ever-increasingly material world. I really like the last sentence you wrote, about the importance of remembering the whole creative process to prevent the cultural river turning black. Isabel LaRosa's music isn't completely heartless or without substance just because some parts of the songs are intended to bring her fame, because she still puts care into the song as a whole. She still hasn't lost her appreciation for creativity.
ReplyDeleteI really liked your last sentence to your third paragraph and I think it sums up creativity and social media very well. It often feels in this day and age, that artists cling to their minute of fame from popularity on Tiktok and then continue to reach for that fame the rest of their career. The repetitive, ear-worm that is music on TikTok has limited artists to limiting their creativity and being more focused on what the quickest way is to get views and attention. We also frequently see that the chorus or bridge of a song may blow up on social media but the art that is the rest of the song may not be listened to the way the artist intended it to.
ReplyDeleteI'm not on TikTok, and your point about how the platform prioritizes cramming as much as possible into a short timeframe explains why very well. I think social media does have its value in giving artists new ways to share their creations, but it's still important to make sure that they're making whole, thoughtful works and not content for audiences to consume and then forget about.
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