Together forever

As of the time of this post, Bella Thorne's song TTYLXOX has topped Radio Disney's requests for five straight days.

Not bad for someone whose first experience in a recording studio was...less than a year ago.

It's very pop-oriented indeed.  Yet this track still stands out alongside the usual mix of frenetic tracks from established folks like One Direction and Selena Gomez, and the mainstream hits of Adele et al.  It's not quite like anything else Shake It Up has featured...and maybe that's why it's risen to prominence as quickly as it has.

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The TTYLXOX dance sequence from "Judge It Up" at first seems like any other - using the full Shake It Up Chicago dancefloor set, having Tinka in as part of the routine, and so forth.

Yet the dancing itself isn't what makes the scene so notable.  It's more the acknowledgement of Gary Wilde's first-episode comment, that Rocky and CeCe have the "it" factor: the short skit before the choreography begins, in which the two gals pantomime a text conversation between each other.

To this point they've been the background girls...the paradox that has made the show easily related to by its audience, that Bella and Zendaya have become stars in real life while acting out as a couple of regular kids who are on their very first entertainment gig.  One could argue "Throw It Up" represents a paradigm shift away from this, where the leads finally get chosen for a spotlight dance (a promise that gets obstructed by Tinka's machinations), but that was more of a teaser than anything else.

I wouldn't consider the dance as a breaking-the-fourth-wall moment...Shake It Up so far isn't the type of show to go that route.  But it very much captures the real-life chemistry of Ms. Thorne and Ms. Coleman as both actresses and friends, in a similar vein to the real-life parallels in my two favorite episodes ("Add It Up" and "Break It Up").

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In my most recent blog I noted how Zendaya's Something To Dance For captures the Shake It Up zeitgeist better than the actual Selena Gomez title track that precedes every episode.

Same probably could be said for TTYLXOX in a bit of a different light.

So far the show's produced basically four singles:

- the aforementioned theme song, which tends to accentuate the "go out and dance" vibe of the show
- Zendaya and Bella's "Watch Me," about empowerment
- Zendaya's "Something To Dance For," a song focusing on pining for dreams, for making it to where you're meant to be
- TTYLXOX.

The latter tune looks at the other primary theme of the series - friendship - and expands on it in its lyrics:

I'm a better me - when you're here next to me.


Throughout the two seasons of Shake It Up, we've witnessed brief moments of impetuousness - Rocky's rebellious turn in "Wild It Up," CeCe's irritation at Rocky's dismissal of her academic ability in "Egg It Up," the conflicts of "Shrink It Up" - with the understanding that no matter what, the best friends would realize how much more they can accomplish and have accomplished together.

In the real world, it comes as absolutely no surprise that TTYLXOX and Something To Dance For ended up sharing a mashup music video: not just because Disney and the fans all clamored for it, but also because Zendaya and Bella really wanted this music adventure to be just as much about the two of them as much as it was about their individual personalities.

There's that old cliche of "life imitating art" but I'd pose the opposite here: Shake It Up has become a vehicle for the two gals to demonstrate their importance to each other both on-set and in their lives way outside the studio.