Buss It Please, Buss: 6 Instagram Reel Music Trends Making Our Ears Bleed

Instagram reel trends filled the gap TikTok India left behind like despair has been filling our days in the pandemic. Both came into full glory around roughly the same time in mid-2020. And since then, for both, there has been no looking back. Albeit in vastly polar ways, of course.

At this point in time, the reel explore page on the media-sharing app seems to be a different world altogether, a publicly private bubble of fun where no distress calls, no life emergencies, no coronavirus losses could ever penetrate. For those who can afford this privilege, there is some distraction - if not complete solace - to be found in Instagram reels.

And yet, as much as I enjoy my fair share of reels, I find that even that momentary respite comes bearing an iota of annoyance. Out in the deep sea of short-form videos where people dance and make merry, certain Instagram reel trends have begun to gnaw at my tolerance.

I'm not a crabby grandpa shaking his fists at young people just trying to have a good time. I'm young people too; which is why my ears can only take so many replays of a song before it turns boring and then stale and then outright irritating. You know the feeling when you like a song and therefore listen to it unhealthy times and then eventually hate it? This is that.

But who can stop determined reel creators and audiences who are perhaps finding 15 or 30 second-slivers of joy in these bleak times? Not me, for sure. (Perhaps if the government decided to ban it like they did TikTok...) One can only then hope that at least these six Instagram reel trends slowly, gradually meet their end.

Instagram Reel Trends That Should Fade Out With The Pandemic:

1. Another One Bites The Dust

Maybe my non-fun glasses prevent me from seeing the amusement or point of this trend where people, with each beat of the music, contort their faces to strange designs. An eyebrow raise, a squint, a lip bite and a head bob. My understanding of this trend is as directionless as this expression script.

Is it supposed to flaunt people's coordination skills? Are we supposed to laugh? Or marvel at how anything becomes a trend? Just what is one supposed to do when a person looks straight at you from behind the screen, lips tucked and head moving rhythmically?

Also, it's a Queen song, for Freddie Mercury's sake. It's better left not messed around with like this.

2. Fack

I cannot - cannot - listen to another 'mmmm' buzzing on my reels feed because I have run out of bandwidth for it. Although for this one, the blame is all and entirely on Eminem's head for singing it. The reel content foregrounding the song is actually quite nice - a lot of it informative and intelligent too. But how must one focus on that with Fack in the back?

First, the lyrics are super sexist, as the rapper's songs have always been. Second, most people don't really know that the song is not what they think it is.

And third, please go look the lyrics up.

3. Sajde Kiye Hain Lakhon

Again with the expressions! For every time that content creators suck in their mouths and widen their eyes and blow big kisses to the edited beats of a perfectly good song from Khatta Meetha, the cringe-o-meter in my head threatens to reach breaking point.

There have been some creative renditions of it that have been cleverly matched to unbelievable precision with the beats. But otherwise, the obsession with arbitrarily playing out expressions to songs seems to be a new one that comes lugging a big red question mark along.

4. Bajre Da Sitta

This is only here because the original Punjabi folk song is an absolute earworm that is, unfortunately, dying a slow death owing to its repetition over and over every consecutive reel on the feed. It's basically background music for people transitioning dramatically from a regular dressed-down look to an uber-glam spectacle.

Watching these people absolutely nail their make-up, hair and &t=454s">appearance is a wonder and delight. But one I now prefer watching on mute for not wearing out my capacity for the sweet original track sung by Surinder and Parkash Kaur.

5. SugarCrash

SugarCrash sounds like the notes that would appear when a player loses that mobile app game they were on the last level of. Or like the music that used to float out of creepy dolls from our childhood. It's like techno music sprinkled with sugar. The lyrics though paint a rather darker picture.

Aside from the make of the song, which may subjectively appeal to many, the grudge I hold against this Instagram reel trend is that the humour that comes attached with it isn't usually funny in the slightest. But maybe I'm not looking in the right places.

6. Buss It

This Erica Banks bop finds a place on this list precisely because it is a bop. So catchy it is that it latches onto your very soul the moment it enters your consciousness and then never leaves. It can begin playing in your head unannounced, and then wherever you are - at home, in the garden, working from home - you get the urge to just 'buss' it when the beat drops.

If you have the daring, you can do the slight twerk that comes with the song, disregarding any people watching you. Carefree. But beware. In case a desi parent is watching, they'll be sure to ask why you're sitting on an imaginary Indian-style toilet in the middle of the living room.

Views expressed are the author's own.