Illustration by Emily Lichty for the Daily Northwestern
“Gnarly” by Katseye is a song that was released this past year, and it immediately gained popularity, topping charts. It gained more popularity a few months after the initial release due to the similarity between a demo song for another artist, and people threw some copying allegations at Katseye for the song. The song was written by Alice Longyu Gao, a Chinese songwriter and DJ who wrote a demo for the song and posted it online. As soon as the actual song by Katseye was released, people knew that the demo by Alice was written for Katseye. Although people accused Katseye of copying the demo, it was later revealed that Alice had given it to Katseye for release.
After all of this, the lyrics themselves got hate for naming-dropping Tesla at the beginning of the song. Fans picked it apart and found that in the background vocals, it has a disgusted sound when Tesla is said, showing the double meaning of the word gnarly. People said that the lyrics made no sense and that it was just a disappointing song.
In the beginning, I didn’t like the song, but as I listened to it more, I found that it’s just a fun song that plays with the double meaning of the title. Almost a year after its release, it’s still a song that is being used all over the internet. Ultimately, many people love it, and many people hate it.
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I love this!!!!!!!!!