In October 2022, Taylor Bickett's song "Quarter Life Crisis" went majorly viral, accumulating over 10 million streams on Spotify. The song is all about feeling torn between teenagerhood and adulthood, and the complicated feelings that come with growing up — something that listeners everywhere found deeply relatable.
The track's viral popularity reflects these universal feelings, spawning a TikTok and Instagram trend with social media users — including celebs like Drew Barrymore and Kevin Jonas — creating videos that show snapshots of them as teenagers before revealing their current looks. These now-and-then transformations are set against Bickett's song lyrics, "I swear 16 was yesterday / But now I'm closer to 28," narrating the photo transition.
In an interview with Repeat Replay, Bickett opened up about what it was like to experience TikTok success while seeing so many relate to her song through this trend. "I mean, to say it warms my heart would be an understatement," she said. "Aside from the fact that it's just incredibly cool that hundreds of thousands of people were making videos to my song, the trend was so sweet and nostalgic. When people shared photos of themselves at 16 and then now, I so often could visibly recognize a growth in confidence."
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