KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A Missouri man is moving up the Country music charts and it is all thanks to TikTok.
Bryan Andrews is from Carrollton, Missouri. He started writing songs in college and playing live shows around the area. He even did a "Small Tour Tour for the Cure" that raised $1,300 for St. Jude.
Then the pandemic happened.
"I don't think I would have blown up if COVID didn't happen because it just so happened that when the lockdown hit and everything was shut down, everybody was on their phone," Andrews said.
He instead started sharing videos of his music on Facebook, and finally TikTok. He thought the app was just for funny videos and dance moves, but decided to try his own content.
His original song, "Liquor and Pills" posted last month, did extremely well.
"It was my first like viral video of my original music. I just put 30 to 40 seconds of it on there. it ended up getting 700,000 views and like 60,000 likes and I was like ok," Andrews explained.
After that, his song got played on a local radio station, a huge moment for any musician.
Andrews made a video hearing his song on the radio for the first time. That video got 14 million views. The song also hit number six on the iTunes country chart.
"That was crazy. Well, it's still one of the best days of my life," he said.
He now has over 538,000 followers on TikTok and hopes to hit 1 million with fans from as far away as Scotland, Norway and Australia.
"When I figured out that people actually liked what I had to say and wanted to listen to the words I write, then it was surreal. Very surreal and I was like, you know what, I gotta do this is what I want to do for rest my life," Andrews said.
