The TikTok Remix That Launched Disco Lines

Transcript

Narrator: Nowadays, every DJ prays their song goes viral on TikTok.

Disco Lines: I made a TikTok, and today we're going to try to make a viral TikTok song. I mean, it's basically a cheat code if it does. I looked for a cheat code to get into it.

Narrator: But there was one DJ who figured out the algorithm early, going viral before any other artist was even on the app.

Disco Lines: It wasn't getting anywhere. And then TikTok came out.

Narrator: This is the story of how one TikTok changed Disco Lines' career forever.

Disco Lines: That song changed my whole career, actually.

Narrator: How he almost gave up on music if not for it, and why his success wasn't just luck like people said it was. People like to weigh in on it, right? People be like, "Oh, you blew up via this new app." And it's like, well, so what did Disco Lines really do different to go viral on TikTok? Well, after scouring his old TikTok videos, I found the hidden answer. But before we can understand why, first we have to go back to where it all began.

Growing Up in Boulder

Thaddeus Francis Labuszewski entered the world on January 26th, 1999, in Boulder, Colorado. Without even realizing it, he grew up in one of the best places in the entire country to break into dance music. Home to Red Rocks, where artists like Subtronics and Skrillex, and eventually even Disco Lines himself, would perform. He absolutely loved it there.

Disco Lines: I grew up going to those concerts when I was like 13, 14, sneaking in with a fake ID. And I just loved electronic music. That was a community I was fostered around.

Narrator: But even with all that around him, his dad never believed a creative career was actually possible for him.

Disco Lines: I never fully believed the creative path was possible.

Narrator: See, his dad worked a technical job at NASA and didn't think creative careers made any money. He didn't even allow him to study anything with the word "arts" in it.

Disco Lines: He never liked the whole artistic thing. He never saw that as a funnel for income.

Narrator: Luckily, he had his mom, who worked in marketing. And while that planted a spark of creativity early on, she'd play an even bigger role down the line, convincing him to stay with music when he almost gave up on it. But that's a subject we'll come back to later. Still, though, his musical side wouldn't click until about high school. But growing up in Colorado, it didn't take long before he first heard the name of EDM.

Disco Lines: A homie in our computer class showed me Skrillex's "Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites," and we put that on the old MacBooks, and I was like, "That's the most beautiful thing I've ever heard in my entire life."

Narrator: Thad even told Festival Insider he literally Googled something like "how to make EDM," and from there he went down the rabbit hole of YouTube music production tutorials.

Disco Lines: YouTube tutorials. YouTube's great. I feel like you can learn anything nowadays.

Narrator: Now, by high school, he was trying out instruments like guitar and piano, but only to quit, saying they were too boring, and soon a new obsession would take over. See, he was fascinated with Skrillex's electronic sound, so he grabbed the school laptop and started experimenting with tropical house and trap beats.

Disco Lines: I was producing in high school. I used to make beats. Are you familiar with Suicide Boys?

Narrator: Yeah.

Disco Lines: I made stuff in that style, and that took like four or five years.

Narrator: And this is when he produced his first ever track, a song called "Enigma." The only problem, that debut didn't go quite the way he hoped.

Disco Lines: It was called "Enigma." And I put it on my Spotify, or I put it on my SoundCloud at the time. I showed it to my baseball team, and I remember this kid coming to me after practice. He's like, "Yo, did you make that?" And I was like, "Yeah." And he's like, "That was one of the worst songs I've ever heard."

Narrator: At this time, he was going by the name Shady Nasty, a name soon to be changed in college.

Disco Lines: My old DJ name was Shady Nasty.

Narrator: Shady Nasty?

Disco Lines: Yeah. Which is like worse.

Narrator: That is so...

Finding Disco Lines

Thaddeus graduated high school and enrolled at the University of Colorado Boulder in 2018. And it was here that his musical career would take a major turn. At first, he planned to pursue a degree in medicine, but after just one class, he quickly realized that path was way over his head.

Disco Lines: I tried to be a doctor freshman year, cause my grandfather is a doctor, and I was trying to go under that path.

Narrator: But Thad, he wasn't looking for an easy way out with a simple major. Instead, he chose something that might impress his NASA-employed father: software engineering. But everything shifted when he joined the Sigma Pi fraternity. See, at the start of his sophomore year, the fraternity needed a DJ. And even though he had never touched decks before, he figured his production skills could translate into mixing. So he gave it a shot, and from the very first time he touched those decks, he was hooked. It was right there in the frat house that the name Disco Lines was born.

Disco Lines: One of my friends was like, "Thaddeus, you want to come take a disco line?" I was like, "What is that?" And she was like, "It's coke and Molly."

Narrator: But he wasn't just mixing. He still kept on to the producing side of things, working on his craft any chance he got. Only this time, he went harder. During the day, he would go to class and even work at a ski mountain. But at night, he cooked up beats with his boys, releasing Disco Lines flips on SoundCloud. Life was going good, but Thaddeus, he wanted more. That's when he decided to take the next step in any young DJ's career.

Disco Lines: Just DJ Wine Wednesday. Like, I want to do the actual theater, the Fox Theater, which was the staple venue in Boulder.

Narrator: Only there was one problem.

Disco Lines: I reached out to the guy, and he's like, "Yeah, you can play, but you need to sell tickets." And I was like, "Okay, that should be easier said than done, right?" And then I tried doing it, and no one wants to spend an extra $15 on a Wednesday. It's so hard getting people. So I would just text people too, be like, "Come to my show, I'm opening for so-and-so."

Narrator: Yeah. But it wouldn't be until a couple of months later that everything truly changed for them. On February 11th, 2019, Disco Lines uploaded his very first YouTube video.

Disco Lines: What's up, YouTube? This is your boy Disco Lines coming at you with my first video.

Narrator: In this video, Thad breaks down his first ever remix that gained traction, which was actually only his eighth ever SoundCloud post. It's pretty nuts. And throughout the rest of his junior year at Boulder, he would upload on YouTube with videos like "Does Hennessy Make You a Better Rapper?"

Disco Lines: We're going to do a little science experiment and see whether or not Hennessy makes you a better rapper.

Narrator: He even made his first ever original song, called "Honey," which did 10,000 streams in two days.

Disco Lines: I released it two days ago, and since I've released it, it's been doing super well on all streaming services. I'm getting a lot of good feedback. Everyone's showing a lot of love.

The Taylor Swift Remix

Now, at this time, Thad was doing great, but what he really wanted was for one of his remixes to go mega viral. That way, he could finally tour and play at colleges. And what he didn't realize was that wish was coming a lot sooner than he thought, and all it took was one TikTok. See, back in April of 2019, he uploaded a YouTube video titled "If Taylor Swift Went One Bar Deeper."

Disco Lines: So today I wanted to take a classic Taylor Swift song and turn it into a deep house banger.

Narrator: At first, the remix barely got any traction.

Disco Lines: I put it on SoundCloud, made a YouTube video out of it, and I thought nothing of it for two years. Nothing happened for like two years. It was sitting on SoundCloud, it was sitting on YouTube.

Narrator: But more than a year later, in July of 2020, it exploded, sparking a worldwide TikTok trend.

Disco Lines: And then it blew up out of nowhere. I didn't even have TikTok on all the time.

Narrator: So how did it blow up? Well, it started with a TikTok uploaded by this guy. Then another TikTok user added his own version of the dance. And finally, influencers like Charlie D'Amelio hopped on, and now the Disco Lines remix was everywhere.

Disco Lines: The next day, a bunch of people started hitting me up. I got emails through the boozy. I got so many text messages. A bunch of, like, big labels were hitting me up.

Narrator: But there was just one problem. By this time, Thaddeus had already graduated college, and he was working a nine-to-five engineering job at Fanatics. He was stuck. He wanted to take advantage of this massive opportunity, but the thing was, that Taylor Swift remix wasn't enough. He needed to release more music. Then a label from LA reached out.

Disco Lines: A label from LA gave me a record deal. I moved to Los Angeles.

Narrator: And then he decided to take a massive risk. He quit his safe engineering job and moved to California with his manager.

Disco Lines: Moving to LA, pursue my dreams as a musician.

Narrator: He went all in on the DJ dream. And at first, it seemed like Thad was living the LA DJ life. But after a year, nothing was working.

Disco Lines: I moved here on that record deal with Astro Works, and I had a whole EP plan with them, actually. They promised me a bunch of money. I was going to sit pretty. I had all these really nice songs done with them, and I was supposed to have an EP come out with them, and it never came out.

Betting on Himself

None of his songs were hitting like the Taylor Swift remix, and eventually the label dropped them.

Disco Lines: And then the label decided to drop all my music and not pay for anything, and I was heartbroken. Maybe my dad was right. Maybe a career as an artist is actually a dream. I was about to move back home.

Narrator: Luckily, though, he had his mom. And when Thaddeus was ready to quit and go back to his nine-to-five, she told him, "Look for a sign to stay. Don't give up just yet."

Disco Lines: The music thing wasn't working. I was like, "I failed." And I called my mom. I was like, "What do I do?" I'm like, "I want to go home." And she's like, "Look for a sign." I could not quit. I could not stop. So I decided to just double down, go harder.

Narrator: And that decision, it changed everything. Not long after, he dropped one of my favorite Disco Lines remixes, "I Should Be Over All the Butterflies," and it went viral on TikTok, racking up over 150,000 posts. Then just a few months later, his remix "Find Me in the Club" went viral, too. So how did he do it? Well, way back in 2019, before he blew up, Thad uploaded a video called "Attempting to Make a Viral TikTok Song."

Disco Lines: And today we're going to try to make a viral TikTok song.

Narrator: So we basically understood the viral formula before anyone else. And after the Taylor Swift remix exploded, he knew all he had to do was repeat that formula.

Disco Lines: And it was all done with me. I was just like, I'm just going to post a ton of videos so hopefully someone will hear my music eventually.

Narrator: And eventually he found his breakthrough with "Techno and Tequila," then "Baby Girl," which officially launched him into the spotlight. And from there, Disco Lines' success started pouring in. And none of it was luck. And the result: he's one of the true OG viral pioneers of TikTok.