There are wikipedia entries for a lot of people, events, and things, but there is at present no wikipedia entry for a performer known as Tai Verdes. This seems somewhat strange, because this absence clashes with the evident desire of his music label to promote him and push his hit song “A-O-K.” There are certainly places, including interviews and various somewhat sketchy websites, where a narrative of the act can be found, but it is striking and somewhat disconcerting that there remains no wikipedia page for the artist so far that discusses his family background, life history, and offers some sources for the material about him that can be found.

The narrative of Tai Verdes as an act is easy enough to gather. Not so long ago Tyler Jay Colon was an obscure employee at a cell phone company who had previously had dreams of being in the NBA and had been rejected, apparently, for American Idol and The Voice about seven times. Nevertheless, with some viral success on TikTok with songs like “Stuck In The Middle” and “Drugs,” he found himself to be a well-supported singer songwriter with very little known about his background and personal life, drawing huge crowds and being played a lot on the radio. From what I have read he claims to have a five-year plan and looks to make it in music for the long haul, and that may be so, but it is striking that this desire for long-term success has been clouded with such ambiguity about where he comes from and how he was able to get so much viral success in the first place.

There is a lot of discourse in the music industry about what it means to be a plant. There are some artists who are very up front about their background. No one thinks, for example, that an artist like Jakob Dylan or Julian Lennon or a group like Wilson Phillips came from a background outside of music in order to create a worthy career. Artists like these are aware that they come from a background of musical royalty and appreciate the legacy of their fathers even as they sometimes struggle with what it means to want to create one’s own legacy while also being a part of the legacy of a famous parent. Far more often, though, there are various acts and groups that come from a background that is within the music industry but not a particularly illustrious one and that results in a frequent desire to disguise the previous background within music that the person had because it feels as if the success and exposure that an artist had is somehow illegitimate because one’s father had a career as a Nashville or Christian songwriter or in writing jingles or something like that which gave one access and a foot in the door in the music industry that genuine outsiders don’t have.

Why does the absence of something like a wikipedia page hinder an artist’s long-term viability? While wikipedia is certainly not a sufficient source for a more academic history, if Tai Verdes has to be concerned about that then he will already be a serious enough and lasting enough artist to succeed well beyond whatever is in his five year plan (which is itself a rather ominous historical reference if one is familiar with the history of the Soviet Union). What wikipedia does is give a casual reader a general familiarity with the songs that someone has written, with the albums that they have released, and with some very basic knowledge of their personal history. This basic knowledge can sometimes fuel a discussion of their influence and place within music, as well as remind one of songs and albums that one has forgotten and how those albums have fared. We can see who produced, wrote, and sampled from an artist we are looking up, and the end result means that we will frequently be reminded to stream such an artist again and enjoy the pleasure of listening to something that we liked but perhaps had not paid much attention to in a long time. As a sort of cautionary tale, if one looks at the YE Hot 100 hits, all of the ones that have any kind of staying power even as genre artists have their own wikipedia pages, while the flash in the pan acts that are not remembered or cared for and just appear as feature acts do not. I assume someone will want to get on that.