Billboard - USA (2021-02-20)

Ashnikko photographed

by Joelle Grace Taylor on

Jan. 19 in Los Angeles.

Chartbreaker

No.

35

PEAK ON BILLBOARD’S

POP AIRPLAY CHART

Ashnikko

A TikTok campaign and major brand deal slowly but surely helped “Daisy” bloom

Born in North Carolina, Ashnikko spent
her childhood on the move: She bounced
between Estonia and Latvia as a teenager before
relocating to London by herself in 2014 at 18. Feeling
isolated, she retreated to sites like Tumblr and
SoundCloud, where she later found a “community of
women” in artists like Princess Nokia and Doja Cat
making fun, forward-thinking music. Soon, she was
saying to herself, “I also want to do that.” Now, since
her single “Daisy” entered Billboard’s Alternative,

Rock and Pop Airplay charts and her latest mixtape,

Demidevil, topped Heatseekers Albums (it now sits

at No. 4), Ashnikko is exceeding her expectations.

Parlophone Records co-president Nick Burgess

says he first noticed Ashnikko when he received a

demo of her song “Bubblegum” in 2017. “She came

[fully] formed,” he says. “She had the same personal-

ity that she has now: super outspoken, didn’t give a

fuck about anything.” Parlophone signed Ashnikko to

an EP deal in 2018 for Unlikable, and in 2019 signed

her to a worldwide multiple-

album deal. That summer, she

signed a management deal with

Various Artists.

Matt Luxon, a managing direc-

tor at Various Artists — along with

George Shepherd, artist manager

and publisher — was confident

“Daisy” (about a female assas-

sin who targets men that uphold

a toxic patriarchy) would be a

success — his team serviced the

song to mainstream radio, includ-

ing the two biggest pop stations

in the United Kingdom, Capital

and BBC Radio 1. They also se-

cured a cross-platform deal with TikTok and Beats by

Dre for the out-of-this-world music video directed by

Charlotte Rutherford, which features Ashnikko riding

a giant chili pepper in a twisted latex outfit. (It has

over 72 million YouTube views.) But even with an ex-

pansive TikTok campaign, it still took “Daisy” months

to find traction on the platform. Burgess now sees

it as a lesson: “You cannot tell the TikTok ecosystem

what you want them to do — they have to tell you

what they’re going to do with it.” —STEPHEN DAW

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