On TikTok, Charles Manson Is a Cozy Fall Vibe
Pumpkin spice is in the air and on TikTok, the hygge aesthetic is building to a fever pitch. Videos of spooky still lifes and boots crunching through leaves have been circulating since July, and lately home-decor videos have a distinctly fall aesthetic to them. Candles burn in the twilight, and mugs of coffee beckon beside artfully positioned throw blankets. Accompanying a growing number of these interior-design videos is a scratchy demo of an acoustic folk song that goes, “Home is where you’re happy, it’s not where you’re not free.” It’s clear the first line evokes the main message users want to convey: that home, especially in the fall, should be the height of comfort and coziness. “I liked how it sounded a little bit older and I liked the lyrics,” says one home decor TikToker, Rose Adele, who asked that we not use her last name. “It sounded like he was talking about home, and going into fall, we’re at home more.”
The singer, however, is none other than Charles Manson, who desperately wanted to make it as a musician but is best known for inducing his hippie followers to break into people’s homes and brutally slaughter them. Several members of his “family” killed seven people in cold blood in Aug. 1969, terrorizing the Laurel Canyon crowd, vilifying the counterculture movement in the eyes of the public, and generally putting a serious damper on the peace-and-love era.
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This hasn’t stopped his music from gaining a foothold on the platform, with some users totally unaware of the origins of the song. In one video, food and travel writer and influencer Gillie Houston posted a tour of her apartment that makes you want to climb through the screen and snuggle up with a good book. There’s golden sunlight streaming through a window, crowded ceiling-high bookcases, candles glowing among framed pictures on a shelf above the bed. In the background, Manson’s song plays. One commenter said, “Why the Charles Manson song,” and Houston replied, “Honestly I saved the sound from someone else’s vid and didn’t realize until after I used it…we can’t deny it’s a bop tho.” (Houston did not respond to a request for an interview, and later deleted the comment.)
Manson wanted a music career more than anything, but it didn’t work out. He learned to play guitar during one of his many prison stints before the murders, and developed some contacts in the music scene, including A&R exec Terry Melcher, and, most famously, Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys, who later recorded one of his songs. As he pursued a career in the industry, Manson also looked for different routes of influence. He drew runaways and social outcasts to him, placing himself at the head of his own cult. Then, the prosecution at his trial would later argue, he twisted lyrics from the Beatles’ White Album into signs that a race war was coming, and had a group of his followers kill seven innocent people to hasten its arrival. After Manson’s arrest, producer Phil Kaufman, who’d met Manson in prison and encouraged his music, released an album of his songs called Lie, which included “Home is Where You’re Happy.” It didn’t sell, but that didn’t stop Manson, in jail, from sending some of his family members to hound Kaufman for the profits.
In recent weeks, users chose “Home Is Where You’re Happy” to show off a vintage gallery wall, a beautiful pink houseplant, and a wicker nesting pumpkin decoration. The song even backs an AI voiceover in a tutorial for building a fall centerpiece with materials you can buy at Michael’s and Home Depot. (Cue me, humming Manson in the aisles of a craft store, shopping for dried reeds.) Some posters acknowledged the song’s history. “I wish this song wasn’t such a banger,” one said in the comments. “It’s spooky time lol,” said another when a user asked about the Manson choice.
The way TikTok audio get passed around, it’s often not obvious where a sound originated. Rose, who posts budget-friendly home-decor inspiration, shared her Manson-scored video with text telling followers where she’d gotten items in her airy, neutral-toned apartment. Several came from Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace, including a rustic wooden coffee table, where a journal and coffee mug rested. She says she usually picks sounds from other accounts who post content similar to hers. “I think I found this one through another account that did a similar cozy fall vibe video, which is just so funny now,” she says. She didn’t know who the artist was until Rolling Stone reached out. “I did not realize it was the Charles Manson,” she says. “I was really embarrassed but I also couldn’t help but laugh.”
From now on, she says, she’ll look more carefully at sounds she chooses, but figures this isn’t the last time something like this will happen. “It is really difficult because sometimes, when you’re using a quote-unquote ‘original audio,’ it’s actually not that person’s original audio; they’ve taken it from an interview online or taken it from someone else and just repurposed it,” she says. It can be tough to track. How many people bothered to figure out why everyone was horny for a negroni sbagliato (with prosecco!) last week? “I think I’ll pay closer attention, but I’ll probably slip up again,” she adds.
This fall isn’t the first time Manson’s tunes have had a moment on the platform, and thanks to the speed of the algorithm and obscurity of content origins, it’s likely not the last. Over the summer, dudes posted videos of their outfits scored by Manson’s most well-known song off Lie, “Look at Your Game, Girl,” a track that was later covered by Guns N’ Roses.
Rose says learning the history of the trending fall tune got her thinking about the ever-present issue of the artist versus their art. (See: R. Kelly, Marilyn Manson, and countless other men.) “It’s really easy to box people into categories, and it’s kind of jarring when they don’t fit into the category,” she says. “Charles Manson did really evil things, so we expect him to be entirely evil, yet there he is with a catchy song that’s not evil at all. I’m not justifying anything that he did at all, I just think it’s interesting. Evil people can still have talent.”
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