【原】英文外刊，为什么抖音带火了一些老歌？

Why are teenagers on TikTok obsessed with an eerie 1950s song?

为什么抖音上的青少年沉迷于20世纪50年代一首怪异的歌?

TikTok can make unknown tracks go stratospheric;Yet the app also uses its hit-making powers to give random songs a second life: decade-old singles,such as Mariah Carey's Obsessed and Jay Sean's Ride It, have both enjoyed massive popularity spikes thanks to tie-in TikTok dance challenges.

抖音能让不出名的歌曲走红;甚至，它还凭借自身‘神曲制造机’的能力，随缘给些歌曲带来第二春，包括十年前的单曲，比如玛丽亚.凯莉的Obsessed和杰，肖恩的Ride It,通过和抖音舞蹈挑战赛联动，这两首歌都收获了超高的人气。

But they are far from the strangest songs to have been resurrected. Take for example, Spooky Scary Skeletons, a 1996 Halloween children's song by Golden Girls theme writer Andrew Gold. A remix of this novelty number currently soundtracks 2.6m TikTok videos thanks to, you guessed it, a viral dance challenge. Or even odder, the popularity of Tonight You Belong to Me, an eerily twee unrequited-love song made famous by sister act Patience and Prudence in 1956.

但它们绝不是被抖音再度带火的最奇怪的歌曲，比如说，《黄 金女郎》主题曲的作词人安德鲁.戈尔德 为1996年万圣节创作的儿歌Spooky Scary Skeletons,这首歌的混音版目前成为了260万个抖音视频的背景音乐，你猜对了，这都要归功于一场热门门的舞蹈挑战。更为奇怪的，是Tonight YouBelong to Me的风靡，这是一首怪异而矫情、以爱而不得为主题的歌，姐妹组合Patience andPrudence在1956年将这首歌唱红。

To the casual observer, it may seem as if these old songs have been plucked from the Internet's infinite music catalogue by the modern future-humans of Gen Z, who have identified some exciting and mysterious lure inaudible to anyone over the age of 21. The truth is far less strange:TikTok is simply echoing existing success stories.Spooky Scary Skeletons was already a massive hit on YouTube, thanks to a 2010 video that paired it with a vintage Disney animation.

在不上心的旁人眼中，这些被带火的老歌似乎是由Z世代的新兴人类从互联网上无穷无尽的音乐目录中摘取出来的，他们发现了一些令人兴奋和神秘的诱惑之音，而21岁以上的人听不懂这种音乐。事实远没有那么奇怪:抖音只是在复现已经取得成功的曲目。2010年，有人把Spooky Scary Skeletons这首歌和一支经典的迪士尼短片搭配在一起做了一支YouTube视频，所以这首歌当时就已经在YouTube走红了。

In fact, TikTok's penchant for excavating vintage tunes can be rather comforting: The global, never-ending talent show that is TikTok teenagerdommight seem horrifyingly newfangled, but it feels like a relief to know this tomorrow's world can't quite leave the past behind.

事实上，抖音挖掘老歌的倾向可能是相当令人欣慰的:在抖音这个平台上，这场全球性的、永无止境的才艺秀是青少年的舞台，它看上去似乎是令人害怕的新奇事物，但让人如释重负的地方在于，这个明天的世界无法完全把过去抛诸身后。