‘Complex’ Catches On in a Global Embrace
If TikTok has made you cry recently, it is likely thanks to Katie Gregson-MacLeod.
On August 4, the 21-year-old Scottish singer-songwriter posted a minute-long chorus to an unreleased song she had written called “Complex” — an elegiac capturing of the hollow, zombielike experience of loving someone far more than they can, or will, love you back. Her voice is lovely and affecting, somewhere between wistful and determined as she sings about a relationship that’s ongoing, but already over:
I’m wearing his boxers I’m being a good wife We won’t be together But maybe the next life
Ms. Gregson-MacLeod had just written the song, and had no plans to release it. But by the following morning, TikTok had supersized it. Suddenly, Ms. Gregson-MacLeod was a
meme, embodying the app’s potential as an amplifier of melancholy. In just days, “Complex” became a trigger for what felt like a global group hug.
TikTok is well-suited to this particular stripe of intimacy, because
people love to hear in-depth details about others’ lives, Ms. Gregson-MacLeod said. “There are so many serious songwriters on there, but the ones that I’ve noticed doing really well are super raw, emotional and very stripped back.”
The success of “Complex” reflects the evolving priorities of TikTok, which in its first couple of years was best known as an accelerant for dance trends, novelty songs and memeable comedy, but is now just as often a home for sorrow. The shift reflects a partial maturation of the medium somewhere beyond pure escape.
With her song gaining so much traction so quickly — the original post had about seven million views as of the end of August — Ms. Gregson-MacLeod did what any savvy young musician would do: She TikToked through it, posting duets with singers covering her, answering fan questions, making new memes. On August 26, Ms. Gregson-MacLeod formally released the full song — now titled “Complex (Demo)” — to streaming platforms, a few days after she signed a deal with the British arm of Columbia Records.
The full song is, apart from one tweak, identical to what she had written before her TikTok eruption. “It worked because it was just a moment, and it was a moment that was very real and raw,” she said.
“Complex” has allowed Ms. Greg-* son-MacLeod to take her place in an impressive lineage of female singer-songwriters who have used TikTok as an engine over the last two years: Lauren Spencer-Smith (“Fingers Crossed”), Sadie Jean (“WYD Now?”), Lizzy McAlpine (“You Ruined the 1975”).
Ms. Gregson-MacLeod put “(Demo)” in the title of the finished song because she wanted to be clear that this is just a way station. “I knew that this version had to be first, it had to be the raw emotional moment that
it was in the video,” she said. “But it also leaves room for whatever I want to do in a few weeks, a few months or whatever, because I think it’s going to have a long life.”