While Blu DeTiger’s management team was fielding calls from nearly every label and publishing company in the business this May, she was filming a DJ set for NYU's Tisch School of the Arts virtual graduation ceremony. “I went there for, like, two and a half years, and they always have me DJ at graduation. I honestly don’t know if they realized I don’t go there anymore,” she shakes her head. “I filmed a video that was just 15 minutes of me DJing and shredding on bass alone at home.”
Laughing at the absurdity of the whole thing, she leans forward in her chair, bracing her elbows on her knees as if getting closer to the computer’s camera would ease the distance between my Zoom screen and hers. “I basically feel like I attended my own graduation even though I wasn’t in school. It was the funniest thing.
She dropped out of college a few years ago to pursue music professionally and found success with her single “Figure It Out” earlier this year. A bouncy funk-pop tune with a half sung melody, “Figure It Out” is exactly the song you would expect to come from the cool, self-assured Blu DeTiger. After achieving virality on TikTok last Spring, the single possesses the same ‘before-and-after’ feeling of a graduation. “That was a crazy moment for me. It changed everything,” she explains, “I think the timing was just so right.”
In hindsight, the timing of 2020 seems perfectly calibrated for the rise of Blu DeTiger’s career, though most of her success this year happened in ways she would never have guessed. “I thought I’d make most of my fans from touring,” she recalls. A lifelong bassist, now known as one of the buzziest new players in the pop space, she originally planned her year as Blu DeTiger (the artist) around her plans for Blu DeTiger (the bassist), a balance she has always struggled to maneuver. Within the first few days of January, she had already booked gigs with Caroline Polachek and Fletcher’s tours back-to-back-to-back, leaving little time for her own project, but when COVID-19 began to spread, she was granted a rare opportunity to refocus.
Instead of making fans on stage this year as she planned, she met them online, thanks to the virality of her bass covers and her single “Figure It Out” on TikTok. Though she initially joined the platform for fun, Blu found herself gaining momentum within days. She considers her first real viral moment to be a cover of “Savage” by Megan Thee Stallion played on her favorite Fender jazz bass (it’s blue, of course, get it?), but she says that using TikTok as an effective marketing tool for her music was all about sustained effort. “People go viral on there all the time, but it’s really hard to build up a true following. It was a lot of hard work.”
Recalling the early success of her “Savage” cover, Blu talks about the end of the Polachek tour in London and how she woke up the morning after it was posted and thought she became famous overnight. Showing off her newly viral video to her cousins, they replied, “what’s TikTok?” She rolls her eyes, “I was like, ugh, you guys don’t get it. I’m famous now!
Unbeknownst to her, that would be her last memory before COVID-19 wiped her remaining plans for the year. “I remember other people’s stuff starting to get cancelled, but in London, it was not crazy at all yet,” she notes. Though her mom, who is based in New York City, was begging her to come home, Blu was preparing to fly from London to Berlin where she would first join Fletcher’s European tour as a bassist and opening act. “It’s crazy now, looking back,” she tells me, “I didn’t know it was serious. The Fletcher tour got cancelled the day before we were supposed to leave, but in my head I was still thinking I’d go back on the road with her by April as a bassist for her arena tour with Niall Horan and Lewis Capaldi.”
Even though she was disappointed, Blu DeTiger returned to New York City in March to spend her lockdown catching up on sleep and capitalizing on her new TikTok momentum at home alongside her parents and brother Rex. Also a musician, Blu’s older brother was one of her “big inspirations'' to learn the bass as a kid. “I have had really good mentors in my life, but I guess he was the real reason I started playing so young,” she admits. Now one of her most trusted writing partners and confidants, Blu wrote her breakout hit “Figure It Out” with her brother at her side.
“I had a gut feeling about that one,” she says about the track, but she still did not anticipate the level of its success. “I just thought it was a cool song. I personally liked it and would listen to it.” Soon, the single, her first release of the year, began climbing on TikTok and DSPs. Now used in nearly 500K videos on TikTok and sitting at over 20M on Spotify, all Blu can say about “Figure It Out” is “it’s, like, crazy” when asked about it, still dumbfounded by her own breakthrough.
But for Blu DeTiger, a self-professed “Queen of Manifestation,” she always knew this would happen. “Whenever I want things I say them out loud to my family, my brother, my friends, whoever will listen to me,” she laughs, and TikTok virality is admittedly one of the things she has been manifesting all year long. “When I flew home, I was like, ‘okay building myself up on TikTok is something I can focus on everyday that could keep me sane, and it clearly is helping me gain fans’” Building off the traction of her “Savage” cover, Blu began a strict regimen of 1-3 bass covers a day for months. “It forced me to wake up, put on a ‘fit, and record something every single day. It really helped me get out my pajamas during a time that was hard for everyone,” she says.
Though Blu marks early quarantine as a time of great inspiration, her motivation was soon replaced by anxiety as the changes in her life began to sink in. “It was happening so fast. I realized all these huge moments were happening over the phone.” She confesses that watching her numbers grow on the screen was (and still is) difficult to grasp and that finding success “while the world seems to be burning” is not easy to celebrate, but after catching herself talk so negatively, she visibly shifts the conversation, assuring that she is thankful for her supporters even if their relationship is still virtual.
As she talks about her new fans, Blu beams with pride, launching into stories about young girls who tell her she is the reason they started to play bass, even pausing to remember specific direct messages that were especially notable for her. “I think it’s my goal in life to inspire people to play,” and that, she admits, has been the best by-product of going viral during quarantine. “Everyone wants to learn a new hobby this year, so it was perfect timing for me to start making those bass covers,” she says.
Looking ahead to the new year, Blu mentions that there is an EP on the way, most of which was written before “Figure It Out” was released, but says that is about all she is sure about at this point. “Who really knows after this year?” she laughs, hesitantly admitting that she has planned a few tours already, just in case. “I’m not trying to get my hopes up about shows anymore,” she shrugs, “But this year has made me very optimistic in my journey as an artist. I’m looking forward to it.”
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