ily

ily (i love you baby): Surf Mesa, Emilee, and a Slow-Building Chart Phenomenon

The story of "ily (i love you baby)" by Surf Mesa featuring Emilee is a case study in the slow-building streaming trajectory that became possible for independent and SoundCloud-adjacent artists in the early 2020s. The track, built around a heavily processed sample of the 1967 Frank Valli recording "Can't Take My Eyes Off You," appeared to be a modest SoundCloud and Spotify release before a combination of algorithmic playlist placement, TikTok virality, and radio pickup transformed it into one of the more durable chart entries of 2020.

Surf Mesa is the production alias of Nic Chiarella, a producer whose work sits at the intersection of electronic pop, future bass, and indie pop. Chiarella had been active on SoundCloud and in the digital music space before "ily" brought him to mainstream commercial attention. His approach to the track was rooted in the dreamy, emotionally direct style of electronic pop that had generated significant streaming numbers for artists including Kygo, Marshmello, and Illenium, all of whom had demonstrated that melodically focused electronic pop could achieve genuine mainstream crossover success in the streaming era.

The vocalist on "ily," Emilee, contributed the vocal performance that anchors the song's emotional identity. Her voice, gentle and sincere in its delivery, provides the human warmth that gives the track's electronic production its emotional weight. The lyrical content of her performance centers on a direct declaration of love, simple and undefended, which in the irony-saturated landscape of contemporary pop represented its own form of distinctiveness.

The song's primary sample draws from one of the most beloved pop songs of the 1960s. Frankie Valli's "Can't Take My Eyes Off You," written by Bob Crewe and Bob Gaudio and recorded in 1967, is one of the defining songs of the American pop songbook, a declaration of overwhelming romantic attachment delivered with characteristic high-tenored vocal intensity. Surf Mesa's treatment of this source material strips it to its most essential melodic elements and rebuilds around them an entirely contemporary sonic environment, creating something that is simultaneously nostalgic and fresh.

"ily" debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 on June 6, 2020, at number 100, entering the chart at its bottom position as streaming and purchase data began registering its growing popularity. The song had been released in 2019 but its accumulation of streaming numbers was gradual, and the Hot 100 debut reflected a critical mass of listens being reached in the first weeks of June 2020. Over subsequent weeks the song climbed through the chart, driven primarily by streaming rather than radio, reaching its peak position of number 23 on November 21, 2020.

The climb from 100 to 23 over approximately five months was remarkable and somewhat unusual. Most Hot 100 entries either make their most dramatic chart moves in the first few weeks or decline quickly after an initial high entry driven by release-week activity. "ily" did neither: it entered at the bottom, climbed slowly and consistently, and reached its peak nearly six months after its initial chart appearance. This trajectory reflected an underlying streaming growth pattern driven by playlist discovery rather than concentrated promotional push.

The song spent 28 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, making it one of the longer chart runs among songs that reached similar peak positions during 2020. This extended presence spoke to the song's unusual demographic and platform breadth: it was popular on both Spotify and Apple Music, received radio airplay across pop and adult contemporary formats, and benefited from repeated use in TikTok content that introduced it to audiences who had not encountered it through traditional music discovery channels.

TikTok's role in the song's commercial success deserves particular attention. The platform had become by 2020 one of the primary engines of music discovery, and "ily" was used extensively in videos across the platform's wide user base. The song's emotional warmth, its association with declarations of romantic attachment, and its immediately recognizable melodic hook made it well-suited for the short-form video format, where music functions as emotional shorthand for the content it accompanies. Each TikTok video that featured the song became a piece of promotion that Surf Mesa and his label did not need to produce themselves.

The cumulative 141 million YouTube views the song accumulated confirm that its streaming success translated into genuine and durable audience engagement across platforms. The official music video, relatively simple in its production, served as a focal point for listeners who wanted a visual anchor for the song's emotional content, and the YouTube platform's recommendation algorithms kept directing new listeners to it throughout 2020 and beyond.

The Frankie Valli Connection

The use of "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" as a sample base was both a creative and commercial decision. Creative because the original melody carried inherent emotional resonance that Surf Mesa could build upon rather than having to construct from scratch; commercial because the sampled melody was already embedded in the cultural memory of listeners across multiple generations, giving the new track an instant familiarity that accelerated listener connection.

The licensing of the sample required clearance from the original copyright holders, a process that ensures revenue sharing between the original creators and the new work. Bob Crewe and Bob Gaudio received songwriting credits on "ily," a standard practice in sample-based composition that connects the new work legally and commercially to its creative antecedents. This connection also meant that "ily" participated in the ongoing commercial life of a classic song, introducing "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" to listeners who might not have encountered it in any of its previous forms.

Radio airplay across adult contemporary and pop formats helped sustain the song's chart presence in the late 2020 period, reaching listeners who discovered it through broadcast rather than streaming. This radio component was not massive but was consistent enough to contribute to the song's remarkable 28-week chart run.