Food for Thought: An Interview with TikTok balladist Jake Schroeder
UChicago alum Jake Schroeder opens up about songwriting, TikTok fame, and rotisserie chicken.
photo by Jack O’Connor
For many aspiring artists and, apparently, 57% of Gen Z, TikTok is the key to not just free food, free vacations, and free merchandise, but to a successful career. For young singer-songwriter, comedian, and recent UChicago alum Jake Schroeder, it is also a creative outlet.
Schroeder (Class of 24) recently went viral for his short, catchy, and clever songs, which have gained him over 300k TikTok followers and brand deals with everyone from Apple TV to Got Milk?. When he’s not recording these bite-sized gems, he’s producing singles and co-creating shows like Churn, a new musical about two buttermaidens in colonial Williamsburg who discover the secret to good butter: good gossip.
And then there’s Fork, where five of Schroeder's food and drink ditties are reborn as full-length tracks on his debut EP. On the day of our interview at Schroeder’s childhood home, we pass through the kitchen on our way to his backyard. Schroeder pauses at the fridge, and decides we should have something to sip or eat while we chat. He can’t decide whether we should share a Hugo Spritz or a Caesar salad. Both would be delicious on a hot LA summer day like this one, and both are not so coincidentally tracks on Fork, his most recent creative endeavor since going viral.
Created with fellow UChicago alum, Greer Baxter, and Ben Edelson, Fork is characterized by musical theater, comedy, and simple but effective hooks (see: “Caesar salad / Have you ever had it?” and “Rice cooker, my savior / You feed me a basic flavor”). Schroeder tells me, as he pulls glasses down from his cabinets, the EP was originally titled Lunch Songs, an homage to Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems. And while Schroeder eventually scrapped the name because “no one knows that reference,” it’s an apt characterization of the EP, which boasts songs like “Rotisserie Chicken” and “Rice Cooker.” And when Schroeder and I finally sit down to talk in his backyard, we’ve decided to each sip a Hugo Spritz—the title of Fork’s second track.
Now, he’s released music like Fork, had his Luigi Mangione verses appear on Fox News, and exchanged DMs with the likes of Emma Roberts and Joe Jonas. But before all that, Schroeder was a UChicago student, majoring in English and performing with the improv-sketch comedy group, Off-Off Campus. Initially, Schroeder was a computer science major, a degree he started after an ex-boyfriend claimed he couldn’t get above a B in CS 151. Schroeder set out to prove him wrong, securing an A, as well as an eventual internship at the “gay sex app”—Schroeder’s words—Grindr. (After applying, Schroeder sent in an original song about Grindr. He got a job offer the next day.) It was actually at Grindr that Schroeder realized he wouldn’t end up in tech. In an early viral video, Schroeder films his father in a Grindr hat with the caption: “My conservative dad is really proud of me for my internship. He has no idea what the company does or what it's for.” “I got the internship at Grindr as a joke,” Schroeder said, “so I thought, ‘Why don't I just do comedy?’” He’d worked on an app function called Boost, one that allows users to increase their profile visibility for an hour, and decided that he wanted to contribute his voice not his code to the world.
Schroeder and I both agree UChicago students in the arts have to make their own paths. Schroeder called it “taboo” to pursue a creative career at UChicago—he felt judged by people “who now work at banks and are sad,” and noted the quintessential UChicago pressure “to be the best bureaucrat in the room.” Notably, Schroeder still ended with a computer science minor and, until last Fall, was still working for a tech start-up—before getting fired for spending less time writing code and far more time writing a musical about an appendix searching for purpose, entitled Indigestion. “Oops,” he laughed.
And yet despite these barriers, Schroeder spoke fondly of his time at UChicago, saying—as he poured us both another glass of Hugo Spritz—that this highly-academic culture “gave [him] something to prove” when pursuing a creative field and helped him develop his artistic voice. Schroeder explained that it was important to be surrounded by all different kinds of people: “I am held to the standard of the world instead of the standard of the BFA-educated artist.” And when navigating the more formal side of virality, like contract negotiations, he feels entirely capable because he had to take courses like Discrete Math and Theory of Algorithms: “That rote practice of doing everything at the intensity level of UChicago really is paying off.” Schroeder paused before adding, “except for Global Warming. I took Global Warming.” I laugh at this, recalling how I’d been more surprised to find out a friend had failed Global Warming than I’d been at learning of his ginormous back tattoo.
He particularly praised his musical theater classes with Scott Elmegreen, Ellen MacKay, and his work with Off-Off Campus. In his last year and a half at UChicago, Schroeder devoted himself to musical comedy, co-writing and directing low-budget but polished musicals like Serve and Horsemeat with recent alum Harper Learmonth. Schroeder’s current musical sound is absolutely rooted in comedy. That sound developed, he explained, from writing musicals about murderous country club wives and desperate dentists.
But even before UChicago, Schroeder was tapdancing on a giant dime in the musical 42nd Street at twelve-years-old, learning from a strict Bulgarian piano teacher named Nadia (who would slap his hand for hitting the right note with the wrong finger), and playing the lead in all of his high school musicals (aside from his senior year when he was cast as the tree in Into the Woods. “Everyone deserves a chance,” Schroeder shrugs before breaking into a self-satisfied grin, “but I called it the titular role.”)
This musical and comedic experience has culminated in his current work. Whether describing a rotisserie chicken as “so snatched with the thighs / [he] can’t help but stare with his eyes” or rhyming “fork” with “work” on the EP’s titular track, Schroeder has learned how to write musical theater for the masses, with verses that will have pop fans laughing and musical theater fans humming catchy riffs for days.
What’s also fundamental to Schroeder’s sound, and what makes him so popular on TikTok is his ability to showcase his authentic self in his music and online presence. Schroeder brings the same personable energy, whether sitting in his backyard on a Tuesday after work or a 30-second song about butt wipes. When I ask him if his followers have a good sense of who the real Jake is, Schroeder replies, “They know the inside of my brain. A lot of my soul is online.” And it’s true. Not only has Schroeder posted hundreds of videos in the last few months, but he sings like he speaks—simple but exciting—and always foregrounds his perspective, something that’s both stylistic and necessary as he approaches everything from silly to deeply political subject matter.
This is perhaps most pertinent in his song “US,” a track he released just weeks after the US struck nuclear sites in Iran. When I bring this up to Schroeder, we hone in on the lyric “Hey, Iran / Please don’t bomb us”, which is quickly followed by “Like I didn’t major in poli sci / I majored in English / So I’m sorry if this is an insensitive message.” Schroeder notes that the first lyric is “an insane thing to say,” but explains that the following statement is meant to say, “This is what I know. And why shouldn’t I say this?”
And in a social media landscape oversaturated with creators hoping to capitalize on trends and what “works,” authenticity and individuality are the key to Schroeder’s musical and viral success. His sound is uncompromising, unwavering in the face of TikTok homogeny. Even in a 30-second song about salt and vinegar chips, he’s considering the alignment of the music and the lyrical content, the overall story, and, of course, his favorite part, the hook. Even though he posts three to four songs a day, he understands that quality is paramount: “Every song that I've ever written that does well tells the story through the music.” He's sure to not let the allure of trends dominate his creative process, balancing his engagement with keeping his artistry at the forefront. To Schroeder, it’s simple: people like to send funny, relevant videos to each other. He likes to write music. So he writes comedy songs that people can send to their friends. It’s why, he explains, songs about Taylor Swift’s engagement or Middle Child Day go so viral.
I ask him then if he sees himself as an influencer, and Schroeder visibly curls around a throw pillow: “The word influencer makes me want to barf in a bowl.” Schroeder’s certainly not in it for the free stuff (he notes an accumulating “Free Stuff” pile in his apartment, comprised of backpacks and dry pasta, that anyone is welcome to take from). And while he’s excited by virality, he’s more obsessed with an Ohio mother of four who comments on every one of his posts, “My favorite follower is @MidwestKaren. I love MidwestKaren.” Still, Schroeder acknowledges that he is an influencer, but out of necessity, so his newfound career can continue to pay the bills. But even then, in the professional aspects of his creative work, Schroeder leads with personality, whether through asking Lipton Iced Tea marketing executives if they have gay people in Dubai or messaging with everyone from Meghan Trainor to Rosie O’Donnell, the latter whom he asked to be on Fork. She politely declined: “Carry on, young one. You got this.”
And ultimately, Schroeder hopes to use his platform as a vehicle for the next step. In the coming months, Schroeder plans to self-produce more music, work on a Christmas project called “Sleigh” (which anyone familiar with his work can identify as extremely on-brand for Schroeder), and has plans to write a new musical with Learmonth about an Irish nautical folktale I’d never heard of. “You know, the Irish folklore of the selkie?” Schroeder asks, at this point lounging across both cushions of the patio couch. I shake my head, but Schroeder just sings “I’m not a woman / I’m a seal” as if it’s the most hilarious lyric he’s written. And as is the typical effect of a Schroeder original—and a few glasses of Hugo Spritz—we both break out into laughter.
edited by Madison Esrey
photo by Jack O’Connor