Last year, I was telegraphed a subliminal mandate from the indie rock powers that be: I was supposed to like Geese. The young Brooklynites make good music, but are they the saviors of rock and roll, the defining rock band of Gen Z, the second coming of The Strokes?
The buzz around the band would suggest so. After their album “Getting Killed” came out in September, the band was unavoidable if you’re the kind of person who refers to concerts as “shows.” When frontman Cameron Winter played an “extremely sold-out” solo set at Carnegie Hall, people in the audience seemed convinced that they’d be able to look back on that night in fifty years and tell their grandchildren that they witnessed a seminal moment in American musical history – the birth of the next Bob Dylan. How could anyone live up to that hype?
That’s why, when Wired reported that Geese’s popularity was a psyop, I felt vindicated – I was right! I knew it! I was smarter than everyone for only casually enjoying Geese!
But it’s never that simple. The real story is that Geese worked with a marketing firm called Chaotic Good, which creates thousands of social media accounts designed to manufacture trends on behalf of their clients, which also include TikTok favorites Alex Warren and Zara Larsson. This revelation has inspired a range of reactions, from feelings of betrayal to confusion at why anyone is mad about a band doing marketing, a normal thing that bands do.
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“On TikTok, it’s really easy to get views. You just post trending audios. But artists can’t do that, because they want to promote their own music,” explained Chaotic Good co-founder Andrew Spelman in an interview with Billboard. “So a big part of what we are doing is posting enough volume across enough accounts with enough impressions to try to simulate the idea that the song is trending or moving.”
When you learn how prevalent these marketing strategies are, it kind of feels like you’re a kid who just learned that the Tooth Fairy isn’t real – you probably had a hunch that something was up, but you want to believe in the fantasy that a fluttering fae is sneaking into your …