TikTok stars like Bella Poarch can turn random songs into hits. So why not make ’em themselves?

Two Friday nights ago, amid the manmade waters of Mandalay Bay Beach in Las Vegas, Jxdn gave what he called his “first performance ever” — a real thrill, to judge by a video clip the 20-year-old social media influencer posted on Instagram, in which he flung himself around the stage as he yelped his wounded pop-punk song “Think About Me.” “Wow,” he wrote later in the video’s caption. Last month Bella Poarch, whose video of herself lip-syncing to a British grime track is the most-liked TikTok clip of all time, released her debut single, the droll “Build a Bitch”; not long before that, the app’s second-most-followed personality, Addison Rae, dropped her first song, “Obsessed.” Other high-profile TikTokers who’ve gotten in on the act include Dixie D’Amelio, Chase Hudson and Nessa Barrett, who’s reportedly dating Jxdn and has a pair of sexy-gloomy trap-grunge duets with him. If TikTok is the new reality television — a short-attention-span blend of “The Real World” and “America’s Got Talent,” let’s say — then perhaps these young pop hopefuls represent the 2020s equivalent of Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian, each of whom took a stab at becoming a singer as just one more way to extend her brand. Differences in quality aside, these songs are linked by a preoccupation with self-esteem and mental health — “I can love myself as much as you love me, and that’s important,” Rae told Vogue of her song — that bespeaks a certain faith in the algorithm: Where Hilton and Kardashian modeled their throwaway singles on Nelly Furtado and Katy Perry, today’s TikTok wannabes look to Billie Eilish and Tate McRae.