Do You Remember Me?: How the Stars Aligned for Margot Liotta and Her “Planet Song”

All photos courtesy of @35mmlane

There is truly no place like TikTok. Since its merger with Musical.ly in 2018, the social media platform has skyrocketed in popularity, becoming a hub for short-form comedy, art, and even music. Many aspiring artists use the platform to promote their work and often share snippets of songs on the app in hopes of reaching even one new face. Yet occasionally, a video will reach a much wider audience than anticipated, achieving viral status and propelling the creator into the spotlight.

For Berklee College of Music singer-songwriter Margot Liotta, her well-earned viral moment came after two years of posting excerpts from unfinished songs on TikTok. Although her personal lyrics and hypnotic finger-picking guitar rhythms had garnered an impressive 7,000 followers, it wasn’t until February that one of her songwriting videos took off. Upon sharing the first verse and chorus of a work-in-progress titled “Planet Song,” a beautiful ode to coincidences and chances, the indie artist was met with over 100,000 likes and pleas for the full version. 

“I didn’t think anything of it, you know, I post things all the time,” Liotta said, “I had only written what I posted at the time, and it did way better than I expected.” Despite her newfound success on the platform, the first verse of “Planet Song,” was only the beginning of her journey. Once her now 18,000 followers began pushing for the song in its entirety, she knew she had to finish it.
However, Liotta noted the difficulty in quickly delivering the final product to keep it relevant and allowing her songwriting to live up to its fullest potential. “I knew I had to get it done and produced as soon as possible, which isn’t great,” she said, “But I do think I took my time with it still, even though I was trying to do it as fast as I could. I’m proud of it.”

Upon its release on May 12, “Planet Song” quickly became one of Liotta’s most popular singles on Spotify, amassing over 50,000 streams in its first week. It also continued to gain traction on TikTok and other social media platforms. However, this increased popularity comes with a few caveats.

“It’s a very up and down thing,” Liotta said. “It gives me a lot of anxiety… especially doing promotion.” Liotta confessed that she found it hard to stay true to herself in the process of promoting “Planet Song” after struggling with imposter syndrome when transferring to Berklee from a Chicago film school to pursue her lifelong dream of music.

“During this process, I was like ‘I can just be mysterious,’... because that’s who I feel I am at my core. If I was really being my most self, I would just drop the song and not say anything about it,” she laughed. “But I realized that you can only be mysterious when you can afford to be mysterious, and I can’t afford to be mysterious right now, because no one knows me.”

Yet as her TikTok account begins to gain more attention, the likelihood of her remaining “unknown” decreases greatly. If you’d like to support her, you can find Margot Liotta’s discography on Spotify and Apple Music, or follow her @margotliotta on TikTok and @largotmiotta on Instagram.