No matter what your FYP looks like, if you’ve ever opened TikTok and started aimlessly scrolling, you’ve likely come across the song “Stunnin’” by Curtis Waters. A ten second clip of the song’s catchy chorus—”Ice on my neck, that’s incoming (‘coming) I’m a pretty boy, I’m stunning (stunning)”—blew up earlier in the year. It soon became the soundtrack to 1.4m videos, was used by huge TikTok stars and banked over 340m streams. Girlfriend recently caught up with the TikTok famous “internet artist” (his words!) to talk all things “Stunnin’.”
It’s *the* TikTok song. And, unlike other viral TikTok songs like Beabadoobee’s “Coffee” and BENEE’s “Supalonely,” its creator, Curtis Waters, always intended it to go viral on the app.
“Well, it was pretty intentional,” Waters told Girlfriend. “Me and my brother, we came into quarantine and we were just playing The Legend of Zelda all day in our underwear. We’re just like, ‘dude, we need to do something, we need to blog, like, this is a waste of time.’”
“So, me and my brother were teasing the song on TikTok everyday, promoting and really going crazy,” he continued. “And then, when it actually started blowing up, I couldn’t sleep. I was freaking out. I was checking my notifications every minute because there were just so many comments.”
“It’s a good song but I didn’t think it was that good.”
Since “Stunnin’” debuted on the app, it’s been used in over 1.4 million videos, become the soundtrack to the “what I wear as” TikTok trend, and been used by TikTok superstars like Dixie D’Amelio and Nava Rose and celebs KJ Apa and Debby Ryan.
“Debby Ryan, did you see the one she did,” Waters excitedly told Girlfriend. “That one was so good. That one was amazing. Yeah, I love that one. That one was so funny. I’ve seen a few people do really cool ones to it.”
“Ever since then,” Waters said, “it’s been nonstop, like, it gets bigger and bigger.” Just the day before chatting, Waters’s TikTok track hit the top 40 charts, officially being streamed a shy 350 million times. He doesn’t know when it’ll stop, he admits, “but I don’t really mind it because I’m still getting money off of it.”
Now, in a post-Stunnin’ world, Curtis Waters is looking to do what he does best: “I just want to make music in my room and make all types of stuff and have fun.” His debut album, Pity Party, releases today on Spotify and Apple Music.