A Redditor went viral last week after posting how his girlfriend hates his sex playlist, especially his favorite song on it: “Cbat” by Hudson Mohawke.
Now, Mohawke, a DJ and producer whose real name is Ross Birchard, is weighing in on the playlist selection. His advice for couples hoping for romance in the bedroom? Don’t use his song.
“It’s not a song I would have put on a sex playlist, but shaming is not my thing,” Mohawke, 36, said with a laugh during a recent Zoom interview with NBC News.
The staccato electronic track is best categorized as EDM trap music, which is why many online reacted with confusion and shock when they read the viral Reddit post.
Redditor u/TylerLife posted Thursday to the TIFU subreddit, or niche community. In the post, he said he messed around using “Cbat” in the bedroom with his girlfriend for two years. His girlfriend had just confessed that she hated the song.
“I don’t understand why it took her two years to tell me she hates that song, it’s a good love making song with a good beat,” wrote TylerLife, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In his text, TylerLife included a link to “Cbat.” After listening to the song, the commentators could not understand the choice of music for the intimate activity.
One person said the song sounded like “robot dolphin sounds”, while another suggested the song sounded like “a blow-up clown toy falling down the stairs”.
“Omg the longer you listen the worse it gets. I’m crying laughing,” wrote another Redditor.
“I heard that song and I literally got tears in my eyes from the crack,” added another. “Thanks for making my day and my sympathies for the absolute roast you are getting and will continue to get in this comment section.”
On TikTok, the song took on a new life. Users tried to decipher exactly how the song would work during a romantic moment. The song has been shared more than 85,000 times on the platform.
It also blew up on Twitter, where one user posted a screenshot of the Reddit post.
“Please read this and then listen to the song. you are not prepared for the song,” the user wrote in the tweet, which has since been retweeted 39,000 times. About 17,000 people have also quoted it and tweeted it, and more than 236,000 people have “liked” it.
Hudson Mohawke said people online bashing the song doesn’t bother him.
The song’s popularity exploded while Mohawke was on a business trip to South Korea. He’s been glued to his phone since “Cbat” took off on sites like TikTok.
“Me and my girlfriend are on a trip alone right now,” Mohawke said Monday. “She says: “Put the phone away. I can’t listen to this song anymore.’ And I’m just crying.”
He ended up replying to some of the TikToks on Twitter.
When Mohawke made the song more than a decade ago, it was intended to be silly, he said. “Cbat” was part of the album Satin Panthers, which Mohawke described as an early basis for what would become electronic dance music.
“It was right around that era where dubstep was starting to become a thing in America, and it was getting more and more goofy and funny and aggressive and kind of bra music,” he said. “A lot of what we were doing was a reaction to that and kind of the antithesis to that.”
Mohawke said if he hadn’t released his critically acclaimed new album Cry Sugar just weeks before “Cbat” went viral, he might have been more sensitive to its reception.
“It wasn’t a completely serious song in the first place. It’s a bit silly, and I’ve seen a lot of people say, ‘You must be bored; you’ve got to be really disappointed,” Mohawke said of the song. response. “I’m like, ‘This is great! It’s the perfect life for this particular piece of music.’
Mohawke said he’s glad he’s at a point in his career where he doesn’t need to “crash” to take advantage of the viral success of “Cbat.”
The experience has shown how random the internet is and how any song can go viral, Mohawke said.
Thanks to his viral fame, as of Tuesday morning, 11-year-old “Cbat” was also ranked #1 on Spotify’s “Viral 50 – USA” and #2 on the iTunes electronic chart.
“No amount of marketing genius can do that,” Mohawke said.
