Lyrics and the pressure to go viral: ‘You have to get somebody in two seconds!’

This is news coverage of Music Ally Connect 2026 – our international music business conference that is taking place 22–23 January 2026 in London.

“Lyrics are so important to modern music, because people feel so deeply – and they really struggle to express that… lyrics can be so profound, and we connect to them so well.”

That’s songwriter Maegan Cottone speaking, and she knows a thing or two about lyrics, having worked on bangers (and ballads) for the likes of Little Mix, Kylie Minogue, and Sigala and Becky Hill among other clients.

Cottone was talking on the Music Ally Connect panel on how lyrics amplify the streaming experience alongside YouTube Music senior product manager John Oberbeck, in a conversation moderated by Musixmatch co-president Rio Caraeff.

Oberbeck talked about why lyrics are an increasingly prominent feature on streaming services.

“Lyrics are a really strong tool for beginning to open the world-building that an artist has,” he said. “Lyrics are universal. Lyrics are something where everybody’s going to be able to get into it and really approach it.”

He also pointed to wider digital trends. “The increasing use of subtitles for services like Netflix means that there’s even more comfort and awareness that the text you’re listening to is something you’re also engaging with visually,” said Oberbeck.

“Lyrics are a powerful visual surface area for engagement and attention,” agreed Caraeff. “So you’re listening to music, but you’re also watching the music. You’re experiencing the music, you’re following along with the music. Lyrics are a vessel for that.”

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Cottone talked about some of the challenges facing songwriters in the modern age, where they have to balance their desire to write fully-fledged songs – “I always think of it like a three-minute movie” – with the increasingly-common pressure to focus their energies on hooks with the potential to go viral on social media.

“Fine, I get the brief, but everybody’s trying to get that,” she noted. “Maybe in a DJ session that wants the virality, you have to find one punch-line, and you have to get somebody in two seconds. In two seconds!”

“Another thing that’s difficult is that you can write songs with people, and maybe the artist will say ‘I really like this, can I try it on social media?'” she added. In other words, the artist wants to post a clip on their socials to see what fans think. But this can be a dilemma for the songwriter.

“You’re kind of like, well, it’s a really good one, I don’t know! Because if it doesn’t go [viral] it’s burnt. The artist won’t put it out, you can’t pitch it to anybody else, and nobody gets paid until the back-end… as a writer we don’t get paid to go into a session,” explained Cottone.

“So that kind of thing, just burning songs, is another thing to contend with now as a writer, because you’re looking for that little seed, that little hook that might go off. And nobody really knows what that is.”

Oberbeck talked about another challenge, which is the desire of streaming services to offer more and more context around the music, including lyrics but also the stories behind songs.

“We don’t need to have all of that context and all that story just be something like ‘Hey Maegan, please tell us everything about every song you’ve ever written, and please upload all of that on a per-DSP level’. That’s an unfair tax for a lot of artists,” he said.

“We want to make sure that there is a balance of an opportunity for this authentic voice that’s coming from the artist, as well as being able to lean on the fan community.”

The panel ended with Cottone’s advice for younger musicians, encouraging them to focus on “authenticity and truth” in their work.

“Make the music that you want to make, because when you have people around you saying ‘sound like this, say this’ it’s all contrived. I love a girl group and a boy group, but I’m not looking for truth and authenticity from them, y’know?” she said.

“But for people who want to be an artist… if you want to say something and create in your own way, you have to do that. If you look at fashion, we don’t tell Christian Dior what we want to wear! He tells us.“

Cottone also got one of the biggest laughs of Music Ally Connect when describing how the pressure for viral hooks weighs down on songwriters, citing a recent TikTok-smash refrain that went “Oh no! Oh no! Oh no, no, no, no, no!”

“Oh no? That’s not a song. That’s a caption for your ‘Oh, my kid’s just shat himself on the way to school’ [post]. Sorry, I’m being a little crass! But I think that you have to let the art lead. We are but a vessel, y’know…”

“That rings true to me,” concluded Caraeff. “We can all feel when something is authentic, when it’s filled with genuine enthusiasm or pathos… we just know that that feels real, that we can relate to it. And we can also tell when something is contrived, and we can tell when it’s not authentic. And then it rings false, and we don’t receive it at the soul.”