Earlier this year, new band TRAMP STAMPS dropped their new single ‘I’d Rather Die’ to a supposedly receptive audience on TikTok. Lead singer Marisa Maino, drummer Paige Blue and guitarist Caroline Baker, have since been accused of being an industry plant. The #trampstamps hashtag on TikTok has gained thousands of videos that dive deep into their Instagrams, poke fun at their website, and recommend bands that don’t try to patent phrases like “Make Tampons Free”.
Not only are the lyrics to their songs concerning, but they are, according to prominent TikTokers, a blatant industry plant. Two of the band’s members are affiliated with Dr Luke, while Blue has been actively producing music for years. All three women claim that TRAMP STAMPS is a plucky band of alternative girls with ‘daddy issues’ and ‘religious trauma’. However, they are already established songwriters.
TikTok’s cultural power
TikTok has become a hub for alternative culture – its sophisticated algorithm sorts users into groups based on your age, gender identity and what it perceives to be your interests and personality traits. This has raised privacy concerns in the past. But, the arrival of TRAMP STAMPS also highlights how easy it is to fall prey to targeted marketing. TRAMP STAMPS’ marketing team has clearly been working overtime, slapping Manic Panic hair dye on three women and recycling outdated starter pack memes to profit from an increasingly prominent section of TikTok.
Many singers and songwriters have found success on TikTok by posting their music on the platform. Many girl-power anthems, such as Abigail Barlow’s ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ and even ‘Driver’s License’ by Olivia Rodrigo, started on the platform. It’s become a well-known fact that TikTok drives what’s in the charts. Having clearly seen the success of independent musicians on the platform, it is unsurprising that labels have started to create industry plants to exploit TikTok’s cultural power.
Teenage girls, as many of us know, are a hugely influential force in popular culture. They decide what’s worth listening to: they are the ones who buy merchandise, go to concerts and log the hours on Spotify listening to a band’s music.
TRAMP STAMPS emerges
In November 2020, TRAMP STAMPS popped up on TikTok, posting covers of Blink-182 songs, and claiming to be the result of “3 drunk girls at a bar” writing songs together. At first, their brightly coloured hair and pop-punk aesthetic seemed to gain them a following. Many of the messages in their music are similar to other music that has come from TikTok: female empowerment, sexual liberation, and mild misandry.
In January 2021, the band posted a music challenge. It was revealed that though the band claims to be authentically pop-punk, only one of them could accurately identify a My Chemical Romance song. As an ex (but not really) pop-punk fan myself, I was more amused than anything else. A lot of the younger users on TikTok were horrified at this flagrant disrespect towards pop-punk gods Gerard Way and Frank Iero. Also, the video is hilarious, because the lead singer doesn’t seem to know any of the words to the songs she recognises, including Linkin Park’s ‘Numb’ and ‘Bring Me To Life’ by Evanescence.
Internet deep dives
When one steps back and takes a look at TRAMP STAMPS’ entire marketing strategy: the colour coded hair, the wardrobe entirely bought from controversial brand Dolls Kill, and the claim that their music is “the kind of stuff women talk about all the time with their friends, but no one’s ever put it to this kind of music before”, it is easy to understand that TRAMP STAMPS represents an incredibly whitewashed, corporate resurgence of riot grrrl culture.
But no one seems to have told TRAMP STAMPS this – they don’t seem to have heard of that particular movement, or understand that the ideas they are writing about have been around in the music scene since the 90s (at the very least).
Directing your entire band’s image towards a subculture of teenage girls who know how to use Google is a bad idea. As previously mentioned, all three of them have previous solo careers. It has been claimed that one of the band members has previously supported Trump. This is a little strange, given that the band’s entire brand hinges on the phrase “Make Tampons Free”.
When you delve even deeper, hilariously, there’s even a Twitter fan account that was created around the same time the band’s social media started to kick off. It agrees with absolutely everything the band says. TikTokers have suggested that one of the band’s members, or their marketing team, runs it.
TRAMP STAMPS hits back
“The band claim to be an independent entity”
In response to the criticism they’ve received, the band have hit back in an angry Notes app screenshot, claiming that anyone who dislikes them simply doesn’t want to see women succeed. Their interactions with others on social media are bizarre. When asked why they had used the same name as another band, they responded that they “don’t pay attention to WHITE CIS BOYS”. Another Tumblr user responded informing the band that they are, in fact, white, the only response was that “Marisa is literally Italian”, so that’s settled.
The band claim to be an independent entity, producing their music entirely on their own, under the name “Make Tampons Free”. If I’m being brutally honest, this feels like a group of men in suits pressed ‘randomise’ on the white feminist phrase generator and then tried to patent it to lure in young, potential fans with surface-level feminism.
Worrying lyrics
Aside from their alleged “racism, or the fact that they’re industry plants, or the fact that they buy all of their clothes from Dolls Kill”, the lyrics from ‘I’d Rather Die’ are bordering on sexual violence. “I don’t know how you think we’re gonna f**k / When you can’t get it up / I’m sick of hearing it’s the alcohol”, are the lyrics that TikToker ‘furbyrights’ points out in their video. They’re right to worry. There’s something insidious about complaining about a man’s right to consent. Does the consent conversation not apply to men?
While I can’t really get behind some of the gatekeeping that’s come with TRAMP STAMPS – such as videos listing things that are “more punk than TRAMP STAMPS”, including 2015 era 5SOS and the Kids Bop cover of ‘Bring Me To Life’ – because I would not describe myself as punk, it would’ve been a good idea for whoever cooked up TRAMP STAMPS in a lab to have introduced them to My Chemical Romance before exposing them to the savage landscape that is TikTok.
Maddy Raven
Featured image courtesy of Rocco Dipoppa on Unsplash. Image license found here. No changes were made to this image.
