Welcome to This Week in TikTok Music, where we dig into trends, viral songs, and whatever else the algorithm has decided is sticky enough to camp out on your feed. With more people discovering music through TikTok than ever before, and viral clips capable of pulling an obscure ’90s song straight back onto the Billboard Hot 100, it feels worth pausing to ask the simple question: what the hell is going on over there?

Stephen Spencer

Kids Say the Darndest Things was a TV show where the host (who we don’t need to talk about here) asked children questions about life, only to be met with outlandish, hilarious, and oddly heartwarming answers. It proved what we already knew: kids really do say the darndest things. That idea has aged incredibly well, even outside the context of the show.

Stephen Spencer, a music theory professor at NYC’s Hunter College, revamps this concept by creating smooth, soulful, yacht-rock-adjacent tunes that, in his words, are about “turning my toddler’s stories into songs.”

@_stephenspencer

lyrics by my 3-year-old daughter

♬ original sound - Stephen Spencer

Of course, the stories themselves are adorable and funny, but the real magic is in how Spencer delivers them. He performs in full one-man-band mode, completely straight-faced and dead serious, which only makes it better.

Take his most popular video, currently sitting at 2.6 million views, centered around “Apple-the-Stoola", the Apple Man. The clip cuts between Spencer singing, playing piano, and grooving on guitar, all while fully locked in and treating the material like a genuine soft-rock epic.

@_stephenspencer

lyrics by my 3-year-old daughter

♬ original sound - Stephen Spencer

Pairing cute toddler stories with music was already a winning combo, but what pushes it over the edge is that Spencer, as a music theory professor, has serious chops. These songs aren’t just jokes set to music. They’re genuinely well-composed, and lyrics aside, they tap into heavy Michael McDonald and Christopher Cross territory. Think late-’70s and early-’80s soft rock, blended with jazz, R&B, and soul.

It all goes down smooth, like a bowl of hot chicken noodle soup on a cold, rainy winter day.

@_stephenspencer

lyrics by my 3-year-old daughter

♬ original sound - Stephen Spencer

Hope you enjoyed this installment of This Week in TikTok Music. Go check out some Stephen Spencer clips for yourself. Just a fair warning: once you do, they will live in your feed forever. The algorithm is relentless. Enjoy!