“It wasn’t our song anymore”: Molchat Doma, the death of the reader and the birth of the TikToker

Abstract

The article investigates the transnational reception, circulation and remediation of music on TikTok, taking as a case study the Belarusian band Molchat Doma (The Houses Are Silent), whose song ‘Sudno’ became viral in 2020 in conjunction with the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic. The article argues that: a) TikTok users generally disregard the author’s encoded meaning for their own self-expression; b) depoliticize and memeify Molchat doma’s gloomy post-punk; c) prompt self-memeification in the author, who becomes an active participant in the textual rewriting. The article aims to contribute to ongoing debates around the digital consumption of popular music.