Last year, Chicago singer-songwriter Gia Margaret issued Romantic Piano, her first release through mighty midwest indie label Jagjaguwar. I’ve been listening to Margaret since her 2018 debut album, the lush, contemplative There’s Always Glimmer, but since then she’s moved from its delicate arrangements into more overtly ambient music that’s even more sparse and hushed. Romantic Piano is her second such record, and she began working on it in 2021. “This was something that I made while the world was shut down,” Margaret says. “It’s definitely a passion project. . . . I kind of thought it would just get overlooked.” Then last month, the album’s opening track, “Hinoki Wood,” went viral on TikTok.
On November 20, Margaret was inundated with messages pointing her to TikTok, where “Hinoki Wood” had become the soundtrack to a meme. The “Just a Chill Guy” meme combines Margaret’s warm, lilting piano melody with an illustration of an anthropomorphic dog by visual artist Phillip Bankss, which he first posted in 2023. The dog character had already spawned a swarm of viral variations, and according to KnowYourMeme, TikTok user abnormalpenguin2 became the first to pair it with “Hinoki Wood” in September 2024. By the time Margaret caught wind of the “Just a Chill Guy” meme, her song had become inextricable from it.
“I still don’t believe that I’ve personally gone viral, and maybe I tell myself this to comfort myself,” Margaret says. “I’ve never really sought out that kind of attention. But generally I feel like most people that are associating the music with TikTok maybe aren’t linking me to it.” Given the huge boost “Hinoki Wood” has gotten, though, plenty of listeners are surely doing a little homework and making the connection. By November 25, when pop-culture writer Larry Fitzmaurice published a piece at Hearing Things about the dire financial climate in indie music, “Hinoki Wood” had racked up more than 13 million Spotify streams. It’s since cleared 20 million, and on December 7 it peaked at number two on Billboard’s TikTok 50 chart.
The song’s unexpected success hasn’t been without issues. Margaret has found strangers covering “Hinoki Wood” without seeking her permission or even crediting her, uploading their versions to TikTok as if the song were their own creation. Despite these violations of her copyright, Margaret says, the song’s TikTok popularity hasn’t affected her day-to-day all that much. “I live a very normal life. I don’t really tour,” she explains. “It feels like a simulation because I’m not a super public person.” The meme appears to have lost steam, but she’s still catching up on all the ways people have adopted and adapted her song. My favorite is “Chill Guy” by Brooklyn drill trio 41, which uses a prominent sample of “Hinoki Wood.”
In May 2023, Chicago punk writer Hugo Reyes and Pittsburgh music critic Eli Enis launched the hardcore podcast Violent Treatment. In October of this year, Reyes published the first Violent Treatment zine, a double-sided single page. He’s since further expanded his activities under the podcast’s umbrella, launching a label and growing the zine. Early in December, Reyes announced the first Violent Treatment release, a cassette of the debut demo by local hardcore band Majesty; last week, he dropped the news that the Violent Treatment zine had returned in a 24-page format.
Reyes says he has no big ambitions for Violent Treatment as a label—he doesn’t see himself maintaining the robust release schedule of New Morality Zine. If the Demo 2024 cassette gets Majesty some out-of-town gigs, Reyes will consider that a success—he’s just happy to contribute to the scene. “If it helps, it helps,” he says. “If it doesn’t make an impact, that’s fine.” Violent Treatment’s Big Cartel page still has copies of the Majesty cassette and both Violent Treatment zines.
Correction (12/24/2024, 12:20 PM): This story has been updated because Gia Margaret did not give permission in advance for the group 41 to sample “Hinoki Wood.”
