Going viral at St Paul’s School
John Phillips and the students at St Paul’s School created their own TikTok video to go with his viral song Bad Hair Day. Photo: Jo Kent.
A music teacher from St Paul’s School in Richmond has become an overnight social media sensation after a kids’ song he wrote 20 years ago went viral on TikTok.
John Phillips has been teaching for 34 years and writing children’s songs for over two decades, so when he heard his track Bad Hair Day was doing the rounds online, he saw an opportunity to involve the entire school and create their own TikTok clip.
“My daughter was the one who originally told me Bad Hair Day was trending and the videos of my song now have over 27 million views.
“There are people all over the world lip syncing and dancing to it, so I thought we should make our own TikTok video.
“I wrote the song, so it’s a good way of connecting the dots back to the composer as well as showing the world what we do in assemblies in New Zealand.”
So, late last month, the whole school of just over 300 students gathered in the hall wearing brightly-coloured wigs and neon glasses.
“Everyone stepped up to play their part. Teaching is that whole game of trying to enthuse and encourage and bring the best out of kids, and music is such a powerful tool to do that.”
The 19-second video was uploaded last week and led John to appear on TVNZ’s Breakfast News and radio stations around the world.
“Back when I wrote the song all those years ago, online music streaming didn’t even exist, so it’s opened my eyes to a whole new way of sharing my work.
“I’ve just started to upload my five albums on Spotify and YouTube, but it’s a work in progress.”
John started writing songs for assemblies in the early 2000s and Bad Hair Day was accepted on to the government-funded Kiwi Kidsongs compilation CD and distributed free to schools across the country.
“I wrote Bad Hair Day in no time at all after my son walked out of his room one morning with his hair in a big curly mess – a big fuzznut, which is where I got the idea for that lyric.”
The song soon became of staple of kiwi kids, and when a social media thread reminiscing about favourite school songs took off recently, John’s track started to feature heavily.
“It blew up from there. The kids who listened to that song growing up are now in their twenties and started posting themselves singing and dancing to it on TikTok, and it spiralled.”
The song even has celebrity followers with TV stars JoJo Siwa and Blippy doing their own versions on TikTok.
“When Kim Kardashian does one, then I’ll know I’ve made it!”
The school raised money from the non-uniform day for the Cyclone Gabrielle Mayoral Relief Fund.
“I thought it was worth remembering that while we are here having fun, there are people out there who are really struggling right now, which is an important lesson to teach.”
The badhairday hashtag is now more popular in Ireland and Denmark than in NZ.