An exchange when the author had Anal Cunt’s “I Intentionally Ran Over Your Dog” as his Tinder song
Hey guys, good news: You can now add a song to your Tinder profile! Another thing to obsess over as you open the app to find, yet again, you have exactly zero matches! A promising new opportunity to communicate that you’re actually not a weird adult breastfeeder, as much as all your photos make you look like you definitely are!
So anyway, Tinder songs are a thing now, and I thought it would be a nice idea—as a bit of public service, for your benefit, loyal reader—to see which musical genre most maximizes your chance of matching. Over the course of one week, I would change my song every day—from pop to punk to folk and jazz—to see if it made any difference to both how many people swiped right on me, and if those people would then continue to engage in conversation once I brought the song up.
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First off:
R&B Fuck Jams
Jeremih—”Fuck You All the Time”Tinder’s new music feature is hooked up to Spotify, so I thought I’d start the week with the most sensual jam I could find on there: “Fuck You All the Time,” by R&B crooner Jeremih.
Hold on, Tom, you might be thinking. Isn’t that a little aggressive and potentially extremely off-putting? And you’d be right: Although I was initially excited by the six matches I managed to get, out of those only three responded to my song-related openers, and most were more interested in stuff like “getting to know me” or the fact that I “didn’t look like a complete weirdo.”
The day was up, and I finished it with no numbers.
Matches: 6
Conversations: 3
Numbers: 0
Antisocial Grindcore
Anal Cunt—”I Intentionally Ran Over Your Dog”The fucking state of that ^ entire sentence, and—in fact—the state of that song. Trying to make yourself seem romantically appealing with a song that essentially amounts to “a man dropping a bag of cymbals into a lawnmower next to a microphone” is a tricky prospect. But actually, I still managed to get four matches, which either means the girls who right-swiped me just didn’t look at the song, or that they all really fucking hate dogs.
With three of the four, my opener of “What drew you to my profile, was it my love for the grindcore metal band Anal Cunt?” didn’t really catch on. But strangely, with one of the ladies, it did—although not quite how I’d expected. She thought I was trying to bring up the subject of anal sex in a classy way, and then psychoanalyzed me to within an inch of my life, claiming I’d recently split up with a girlfriend, was forced onto Tinder by my friends, and was being a dickhead on purpose.
Alas, only her final assumption was correct, and we parted ways without exchanging numbers.
Matches: 4
Conversations: 1
Numbers: 0
The Best Pop Song of the Last 50 Years
Justin Bieber—”Sorry”Thankfully, after the borderline inhumanity of Anal Cunt, I got to go back to basics with the wafer-thin sounds of Justin Bieber’s “Sorry.” After the last song choice, this was like having a cooling balm gently applied to my red-raw Tinder profile by the hands of an angel. Surely it would stand me in better stead? Surely my love for literally the most inoffensive song in all of human history wouldn’t harm my chances?
It didn’t! I got SEVEN matches in a day and had FOUR conversations with what I assume were REAL LIFE women! And it’s not hard to see why, with an opener as seductive as “Are you a Belieber?!?!” or as dark, broody, and mysterious as, “Is it too late now to say sorry?”
Only one person responded by telling me basically to fuck off, which was absolutely fair enough, all things concerned. Still, even after all that, as you can probably already guess, I once again finished the day with no numbers. Slow week for romance, this.
Matches: 7
Conversations: 4
Numbers: 0
Classic Punk Rock
Bad Brains—”Sailin’ On”Right, fuck this. If even the biggest song of the last year wasn’t going to do me any favors, I thought I’d be real. That I’d do me. That I’d go back to what I know and love from my teens, which is shouty punk rock. And there doesn’t come any punk rock louder or shoutier than Bad Brains. My reasoning here was that maybe I’d match with some “real” girls who also “hate the man” and dig my “fuck authority” vibe.
And you know what? At first, it seemed to work: I got six initial matches with my Bad Brains bio. Only problem was no one seemed to have heard of Bad Brains, or—when I forced them to listen to the song by awkwardly asking them again and again to listen to the song—nobody liked it. Like, seriously everyone hated it.
This musical journey was turning into more of a musical car crash, where the car is made out of love and crumpled bonnet is my heart, and maybe the wheels are my hopes of finding a partner, because although they’re attached to the car they are suddenly grinding to a halt or actually detaching from the main body of the car itself? The point is: I got no fucking numbers.
Matches: 6
Conversations: 2
Numbers: 0
Twee Folk
Ray Lamontagne—”All the Wild Horses”This was brutal. It had been half a week and my insistence on discussing only my Tinder anthems with my matches was getting me nowhere. In fact, the constant rejection was making me a bit emotional. So emotional that I needed to wallow in the soft, soothing tones of Ray Lamontagne’s folk classic “All the Wild Horses.”
Maybe there were other Tinder anthem heads out there feeling jaded after putting their favorite song out the world and being as capriciously judged as I was? Maybe they too would feel the pain in Ray’s voice? Maybe they would give me their number?
Unfortunately for me—and for other flannel-wearing men who like teary guitar music—turns out women don’t care about you, or your emotions, or your shit taste in campfire ballads. Despite managing five matches, every conversation starter was rebuffed with the worst kind of rebuff: silence.
The deafening silence of a man using folk music to try and hook up with someone via a dating app. Is there a silence more tragic?
Matches: 5
Conversations: 0
Numbers: 0
Trap Banger
O.T. Genasis—”CoCo”OH SHIT! IT’S LIT! THIS IS MY JAM! TURN UP! I’M TURNT!
The above is the thought that ran through the minds of any and all potential Tinder matches as they viewed my profile, before then involuntarily screaming those words out loud in excitement. How do I know that? EIGHT MATCHES, BABY.
The song lends itself to a great ice-breaker: “Are you in love with the coco?” Which, while technically a question about whether or not they have a cocaine problem, seemed to go down very well. In fact, bizarrely, one girl even said in no uncertain terms that the fact I like “CoCo” was a massive turn-on—and I ended up getting my first number of the week because of it
God bless you, O.T.
Matches: 8
Conversations: 5
Numbers: 1
Smooth Jazz
Ella Fitzgerald—”Get Thee Behind Me Satan”This is a great song title for the end of this experiment, because not only does it work to describe my terrible week, but also every woman’s experience of men at pretty much any point on pretty much any dating app ever. Also, like JB earlier on in the week, this track is aurally inoffensive and, I hoped, might show any potential matches my softer side.
Turns out it went down quite well. Honestly, people genuinely seemed to think it was interesting that I liked jazz over other genres—they were “intrigued” and “liked it.” So much so that I even managed to get another number.
Matches: 5
Conversations: 2
Numbers: 1
So there you have it: Turns out people on Tinder exclusively like those two traditional bed-fellows—classic jazz and trap. From now on, my Tinder song will be the “Summertime” / “Trap Queen” mashup I’m desperately trying to create with absolutely no knowledge of music production.
Follow Tom Usher on Twitter.
