Indie Win

How an Indie Artist’s Lament Became TikTok’s Biggest Inside Joke

Singer Sophia James talks to *Rolling Stone *about her upcoming album and the single promotion that went from one-off post to the platform’s meme of the moment

The Blue Man Group, K-pop stars Le Sarrafim, pop band The Plain White T’s, and Nobel Peace Prize-winning activist Malala Yousafzai don’t have a lot in common. But on TikTok, an indie musician’s desperate attempt to promote her new song has made them all declare themselves to be part of the same group, and sparked the app’s biggest inside joke of the season — and a viral reminder of the battle independent artists face when trying to make their voices heard. And it all started with one simple pronouncement: “If you are watching this video you are in Group 7.”

For the past 10 years, Australian singer-songwriter Sophia James has spent her time in the Los Angeles music scene performing her blend of soft-rock and power pop to ever-changing audiences, in the hope of finding success. This included a stint on the 2020 season of American Idol, where James ended in the Top 10 (under her given name Sophia Wackerman), and tours with artists like Jensen McRae and actor and musician Ben Barnes. That exposure that netted her roughly 25 million streams and once, earlier this year, a quick snapshot of her song “Clockwork” on Grey’s Anatomy. These are all career milestones, but for an independent artist like James, producing and releasing music without the backing or support of a label can feel like a never ending battle. It was this frustrating push and pull that birthed her new song, “So Unfair.”

“It’s become apparently clear to me within the past few years that to effectively make it, you either have to have copious amounts of money or dumb, dumb luck,” James tells *Rolling Stone. *“And I was in a place where I was feeling like I could not afford to wait on the luck anymore. So this song was just a hodgepodge of all of those feelings of frustration and powerlessness. It was about my desire to be in [the music industry] and the feeling like I couldn’t quite hack it.”

James wrote “So Unfair” alongside producer Alex Bilowitz, one of the first tracks in an album she plans to release next spring. But while creating the song might have enabled James to explore her feelings of exasperation and stagnation, what came next was something she dreaded: promoting her work. Even for artists signed to major labels, using social media to promote upcoming releases can feel like a necessary evil — one that leaves many either at the mercy of the algorithm or feeling like they’ve put down their instruments in favor of advertisement. In the past three years, dozens of indie and mainstream artists alike have said that musicians are receiving intense pressure from labels and executives to manufacture or create viral moments to go along with their work.

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“That’s the great double edged sword,” she says. “To make a living off of music you cannot exist in your own creative vacuum. I’m an artist because I didn’t want to succumb to the corporate hustle, but it’s impossible to make a living off of music without promoting it in some capacity.”

So James took to TikTok, posting video after video promoting her fellow artists, upcoming shows, and of course, her song. But somewhere in the middle of a night of furious posting, she fully ran out of ideas. So instead of creating new concepts, she simply numbered her videos, each with her song playing softly in the background. “I have posted seven videos tonight and this is the seventh one — just as a little science experiment to see which video gets the most reach,” James says in the final clip. “And I don’t know what that says about you. But you’re in Group 7. Welcome!” When she went to bed, James thought she would be lucky if one of the videos reached 100,000 views. But in the morning, a few text messages from people she rarely heard from clued her in that there was something else going on.

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Seemingly overnight, Group 7 went viral. People treated it like a secret club, posting roll calls in James’ other videos, taking attendance on for-you-pages, and declaring Group 7 as the place to be. Part of the draw was the mystique; almost all of the Group 7 videos don’t mention James at all, offering a tantalizing knowledge gap for people who stumbled onto the phrase while scrolling. There was a Group 7 playlist for Netflix users, a Group 7 dance, even a shoutout to Group 7 from guitar player Kevin Jonas during the Jonas Brothers’ recent Florida concert. “Am I Group 7? Yeah,” creator Tefi Pessoajoked. “Do I know what it means? No.” In less than 72 hours, Group 7 was a cheeky if-you-know-you-know trend, one that thrived on posting purposefully with as little context as possible. (It also helps that a song about feeling unlucky is incredibly safe for work — making it the perfect social media trend for brands, colleges, the random celebrity, and even the Empire State Building to participate in without fear.) Since then, James’ video has soared past 80 million views, there are close to 800,000 videos using the Group 7 hashtag, and the singer-songwriter is well past half a million followers on TikTok alone.

As an independent artist, going viral can be the career equivalent of winning the lottery — especially considering how much capturing the attention of TikTok’s algorithm can feel like a constant losing battle. It’s especially ironic given that James’ viral moment centers entirely around a song that’s all about feeling frustrated by the music industry and its luck complex. But even with the success of Group 7, James doesn’t feel like she’s figured anything out. If anything she’s more baffled about the process than ever.

“What’s weird is this whole trend and promotion only really caught fire when I decided to detach from it all. I approached it with this attitude of ‘Nobody’s going to see this anyway, so I might as well just post something dumb and meaningless.’ And again, I am not the only indie artist out here doing things like this,” James tells Rolling Stone. “There is a whole community of us who are trying, day in and day out, to promote our music. I don’t know if it’s being purposefully repressed by the algorithm, or if it just doesn’t favor independent artists, or if there’s no money behind it. So the mystery of it is frustrating, because no one can quite work hard enough or smart enough to crack it.”

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With a viral moment — and zero idea how she got it — James knows that she’s in a pretty good spot: more followers, more streams, and a bigger platform to launch her new album next spring. But her, the biggest joy of this entire experience has been watching other independent artists successfully use the Group 7 trend to promote their own work. As the child of two touring musicians, a lover of Laurel Canyon-era rock, a UCLA jazz student, and a young woman determined to develop the best version of her sound, it’s always been about the music for James. Everything else is just noise.

“This whole thing feels very much like a win for the indie artist, because it’s so hard to cut through the noise these days, and none of us have big machines behind us. But we’re here on the apps and outside touring, working very hard,” James says. “I am not expecting anything I do after this to have the same reach as this Group 7 phenomenon, because it truly was a lightning-in-a-bottle moment. Whether it’s Billboard-charting viral songs or tracks that nobody is listening to, I will be making music either way for the rest of my life. That’s the plan.”