“It’s as tall as them! Hold up! And he’s, like, six-something-bro, you would not see me in a cornfield. “Grass is really that big?” he asks, incredulous. Part of the song’s video appears to have been filmed in a cornfield on Shelton’s ranch in Oklahoma, where the couple have been isolating. They recently cued up the country singer Blake Shelton’s “ Happy Anywhere,” a love song featuring backing vocals from his girlfriend, Gwen Stefani. Graciously and eagerly receiving a recommendation is often a far more generous act than giving one.Įven when the Williams twins do not seem especially worked up about a track, they listen carefully, with a kind of openhearted earnestness. These days, voices loudly espousing some self-declared expertise far outweigh the ones saying, “Hey, teach me something.” The way that the twins remain so open to unfamiliar experiences (they came of age listening to Lil Wayne and Twista but appear genuinely interested in all kinds of music) seems like a rare gift. (Earlier this summer, a TikTok video of two young women unable to identify pop singles, mostly from the late nineteen-nineties and early two-thousands, caused a brief explosion of consternation and pearl-clutching on Twitter.)įor me, the twins’ videos are bewitching for many reasons: their sweetness and good humor, the way they quickly recontextualize (and thereby reinvigorate) songs that I have heard thousands of times, and-perhaps most important-their curiosity and receptivity. It’s not unusual for a young person never to have heard a hit that people in their thirties or forties might believe to be ubiquitous. When I was a teen-ager, certain songs were simply inescapable-they were played endlessly on the radio, or at the mall, or on boom boxes at the community pool-but now listening has become a far more individual and bespoke experience. Most of the songs that they choose to play have been suggested by subscribers, and they range from very recent hits to genuine oldies. Posters of the rapper Tupac Shakur and the boxer Deontay Wilder are taped to a wood-panelled wall behind them. They sit in elaborate, side-by-side desk chairs, situated in front of a sometimes-unmade bed. But one small, pure, reliable pleasure remains: the giddiness of hearing a completely awesome song for the very first time.įor almost a year, Tim and Fred Williams, twenty-one-year-old twins from Gary, Indiana, have made videos of themselves listening to famous songs, and then uploading the videos to their YouTube channel. For a lot of Americans, this particular summer has been a season of fear and concern-or, at best, a kind of endless, anxious boredom. This August-normally a bountiful month in which tomatoes ripen on the vine, hydrangea bushes sag with extravagant blooms, and the sunsets can be nearly psychedelic-I have found it difficult to hold on to a good feeling.
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