How a Little Ditty Written as a Goof Became One of TikTok's Biggest Hits

A few weeks ago, Thomas Hewitt Jones had a double-take moment he’ll never forget. Jones was walking up the block near his home in South London when he passed a road gang working on the street. One of the men was whistling a tune—a daffy but strangely affecting little number he’d no doubt picked up somewhere on social media. Most any other passers-by would hardly have given the incident a second thought. But for Jones, hearing that song whistled amid the clangor of repaving equipment was surreal. Why? Because Jones had composed that very song two years earlier in his house. Somehow, Jones told Adweek, the workman had “gotten connected to it—which is crazy.” Or maybe not so crazy. The tune in question is called Funny Song. You may not know the title, but there’s a good chance you know the melody. At press time, the lively little piano jingle sung in an elfin voice (more on that later) has been streamed 1.3 million times on YouTube and 1.4 million times on Spotify. Then there's TikTok, where Funny Song blew past 4 billion streams in May; it's now clocking in at 6.8 billion. For Jones, the song’s popularity is a gratifying experience, if also a complex one. As a composer whose work has appeared in movies, TV, radio and advertising, Jones is no stranger to the tingle that comes from knowing that millions of people have heard his work. Unlike his commercial gigs, however, the rise of Funny Song has left him with little recognition—and even less by way of royalties (more on that later, too). Funny Song, then, is a kind of social media parable. It's not just a story about an offhand piece of content going viral with mixed results for the creator. It's also an illustration of how many factors need to line up for content to go viral in the first place. Making arrangements Thomas Hewitt Jones is not the kind of musician who tinkers in his bedroom with a laptop and a Casio keyboard, hoping for a few hundred likes. He was classically trained at Cambridge. His instrumental works—which include concertos and symphonies—have been performed and acclaimed across Europe. But Jones is also a realist with a family to support and a London house to pay for, and that has naturally led him to commercial work. In addition to composing music for Hollywood films (Jackie Chan’s The Hollywood Kingdom among them) and for the 2012 London Olympics, Jones writes production music for outfits including Universal Publishing Production Music and Cavendish Music. These firms license tracks for use in film, TV and, of course, advertising. Which is actually how Funny Song got its start. “Cavendish Music put out a brief to me saying they were doing this oddities album of old-fashioned, crazy stuff,” Jones recalled, “and I happened to have this track up my sleeve.” A college kid’s idea The tune was one that, in a sense, had been knocking around his head for years. When Jones was studying music in college, devoting hours to demanding academic work, he liked to unwind in his dormitory room. Along with a few friends (and a few drinks), he’d write oddball tunes and record them on a multitrack. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yz8NSvmAaDw In particular, Jones enjoyed recording himself singing and then speeding the track up, resulting in a high-pitched voice that was invariably funny. (In the 1950s, songwriter Ross Bagdasarian pioneered much the same technique, which is how the world got Alvin and the Chipmunks.) In the years after graduation, Jones said, “It’s become a fun sort of hobby alongside my actual, serious work, which is very highbrow. I’ve always made funny little tracks like this.” Funny Song is a jaunty little jingle in 4/4 time that features some nimble piano work. But its signature is the gremlin-like voice singing nothing more than “Do, ba-do ba-do-ba-do…” After some initial hesitation, Jones submitted “Funny Song” to Cavendish. The publisher added it to its Vintage Oddities Vol. 4 album, and then put it up on YouTube. Where it sat in obscurity for two years. Enter Squeezie The process of how a song—or anything—goes viral is often a murky one. But as best Jones can tell, Funny Song’s trip to the top began when someone named Squeezie came along. Squeezie’s real name is Lucas Hauchard. The 26-year-old DJ, gamer and YouTuber is a celebrity in France, boasting 17 million subscribers and over 9 billion views for his zany videos. Squeezie ran across Funny Song on YouTube, liked it, and then tweeted it to his 8.6 million followers. Which helped. But Funny Song’s views on YouTube climbed only to 150,000 or so. A tweet from French YouTuber Squeezie, above, put Funny Song on its road to fame. It’s unclear exactly what happened next, but some content creator—perhaps a Twitter follower of Squeezie—decided to use Funny Song as the musical background for a TikTok video. Since TikTok’s user features include a button that lets users instantly copy a song heard on a video to use in their own post, a catchy number can go viral very quickly. That’s what happened with Funny Song. In a matter of weeks, it appeared on hundreds—then thousands, then millions—of videos. Nobody’s more surprised about Funny Song’s fame than its composer—not least because he improvised the tune in under half an hour, and recorded it in a single take. A viral star’s surreal world Since then, Jones has heard his composition everywhere. “The other day, I picked my kid up from the nursery and the taxi driver knew the song,” he said. Tutorials have appeared on YouTube to teach pianists how to play Funny Song. Someone even strung the tune end-to-end so fans can listen to an uninterrupted full hour of it. “People write very funny comments like: ‘If I hear this song one more time, I’m going to shoot myself,’” Jones said, amused. “That one-hour thing? I think it’s completely ridiculous that anyone on this earth would want that.” The not-so-funny part While Jones regards the unexpected popularity of Funny Song as “hilarious” overall, there’s one thing he’s not laughing about: his paycheck. Everyone knows that writing and performing music is a tough way to make a living; that was true even before the internet. But you might think that a song that’s been played upwards of 7 billion times—and one that was originally and unambiguously posted by a music licensor—would result in a respectable payday. To date, however, Jones’ earnings from Funny Song have totaled £596, or about $730. The problem, Jones explained, is that “TikTok pays per number of videos synched, and not per stream”—in other words, the platform computes royalties by the number of videos a given song appears in as opposed to the number of times people have watched that video. Despite the billions of plays that Funny Song has gotten, its composer has made less than a thousand bucks on it. Skimpy as that arrangement may seem, it's actually an improvement. Until recently, composers whose music appeared on the platform weren’t paid anything. But in 2020, TikTok began striking licensing agreements with major music publishers including Sony, Warner, Universal and the European audio licensing hub ICE. TikTok’s licensing arrangements vary by publisher. Yet despite the deal struck with ICE, said Jones, “I have yet to see anything fair from Funny Song.” (TikTok did not respond to Adweek’s request for comment.) Priceless music, penniless musicians Jones’ experience points to a larger problem not just with TikTok, but with streaming platforms overall, according to brand consultant David J. Deal. “The story of Funny Song exposes an inconvenient truth about digital, which is that digital is a great place to create content but not a great place to make money off of it,” he said. “TikTok is not the villain here; the entire streaming industry has been exploiting artists for years. And TikTok is just the latest in a number of platforms where artists are not getting what they deserve.” Kurt Dahl, an entertainment attorney and partner of the Vancouver-based firm Murphy & Company LLP, takes a similar position. “I get asked all the time by my clients, ‘Should I put my music on TikTok?’” he said. “I say yes—if you want to get that exposure. But it’s that whole age-old industry setup of being paid in 'exposure bucks.' That doesn’t put food on the table.” Dahl can sympathize with musicians like Jones because he is one himself. He plays drums for the band One Bad Son and has toured with the likes of Def Leppard and Judas Priest. When it comes to royalty payments from TikTok, he said, “There’s some market correction that needs to happen.” Some of it may be happening already. In March, TikTok introduced a new distribution platform called SoundOn. Performers and composers can upload their songs directly to the platform’s music library and receive 100% of royalties the first year and 90% the second. (Though how exactly those royalties are computed aren't clear.) In any case, this presumably more generous arrangement is a bit too late for Jones and Funny Song. Fortunately, Jones has many musical projects in the works and isn’t dependent on TikTok. It would be nice, of course, if Jones' considerable oeuvre—his orchestral, choral and ballet works—could get the same kind of exposure as his goofy little tune. But that’s not how social media works, and Jones is philosophical about the whole thing. “Let’s face it,” he said, “[Funny Song] is stupid. [But] even though this is a completely stupid track, I’m still quite proud of the fact that, musically, it’s decent quality. The craft is the same, whether it’s a stupid little jingle or a symphony.” Music Videos Are Coming Back to Your Living Room