Tai Verdes, born Tyler James Colon on December 6, 1995, is an American singer and songwriter from the Los Angeles area whose 2020 song “Stuck in the Middle” and its 2021 successor “A-O-K” carried him from a Verizon Wireless sales floor to a Gold- and Platinum-certified recording deal with Arista Records. Discovered mid-breakout by McClain Portis of Live2, Verdes built his career on transparent, diary-style documentation of his own rise, turning a thousand-likes TikTok dare into one of the defining pop stories of 2020’s TikTok-to-major-label pipeline.
Tyler James Colon was born on December 6, 1995. Most authoritative bios, including Wikipedia, Apple Music and Qobuz, describe him as a Los Angeles-area, Southern California native, though some outlets describe an earlier stretch of his childhood in Chicago; sourcing on that detail is inconsistent. He attended Babson College in Massachusetts on a basketball scholarship track before dropping out to pursue music.
Before his TikTok breakthrough, Colon auditioned unsuccessfully for both American Idol and The Voice multiple times, facing seven rejections in total. In 2017 he won Season 6 of MTV’s dating competition series Are You the One?, filmed in New Orleans, earning a $50,000 prize that helped fund his move to Los Angeles. He took the stage name “Tai,” a stylized respelling of his nickname “Ty” (he has said he added the “i” because “it’s sexy”), paired with “Verdes” as a tribute to Palos Verdes, California, where he lived. He previously recorded under the moniker “tylersemicolon.”
Immediately before his 2020 viral breakthrough, Colon worked at a Verizon Wireless retail store in Los Angeles while sleeping on a friend’s couch. Apple Music also notes he stands 6'7” and once hoped to play professional basketball, a path that shifted entirely once his music began to travel.
In mid-2020, Verdes posted a snippet of a song called “Stuck in the Middle” on TikTok and told followers he would release the full track if the post hit 1,000 likes. It blew past that number almost immediately. Within about four weeks the song reached number one on Spotify’s US Viral Chart and quickly amassed millions of streams. He documented the entire arc publicly, posting a video from inside the Verizon store when the song crossed 2 million streams, and later filming himself quitting his job on camera, a transparency that became central to his authenticity-driven narrative. “Stuck in the Middle” was later named one of The New York Times’s Best Songs of 2020.
The person who turned that viral spike into a career was McClain Portis, founder of Live2 (branded Live 2 Create, the operation behind the “Art Not Algorithms” mantra). Portis has described Verdes DMing him roughly a week before “Stuck in the Middle” dropped, and getting Verdes on a call while he was still working the Verizon counter, “taking the call in between customers.” Rather than leaning on a single Live2-produced video, Verdes took Portis’s TikTok strategy and independently built out roughly 80 videos in a continuing story arc on his own account, pushing the song from about 1,000 streams a day up through 10,000, then 30,000, then 100,000, then 300,000 streams a day. Portis has called it an eye-opening moment that reshaped how Live2 operated going forward, and the relationship continued past the initial DM: Portis appears by name in the credited cast of the official “A-O-K” music video (2021), a small but concrete public trace of an ongoing relationship between the two well beyond the initial discovery.
“A-O-K,” released June 8, 2021 from his debut album TV, became Verdes’s signature hit and eclipsed “Stuck in the Middle” commercially, reaching number 34 on the Billboard Hot 100. Verdes described the song’s purpose plainly in a press statement: “A-O-K is just a song for anyone who wants to feel 2% better. I made it to help myself, and I hope that it’s helping other people when they listen to it.” The track has since amassed more than 300 million streams and roughly 1.3 million TikTok “creates,” user-made videos built around the song. It also became a minor regional sports anthem: “A-O-K” served as the walk-up song for Philadelphia Phillies infielder Bryson Stott through 2026. NPR’s Planet Money profiled his rise in depth, describing his path “from a salesclerk at Verizon to an internet phenom to a top-40 pop star in just about a year.”
Verdes built his recorded output around a deliberate three-album arc he has called a trilogy. In a June 2023 tweet he confirmed the plan explicitly: “4K will be the last chapter of the trilogy. Thank you for watching every episode over the last 3 years.” The three albums, released under Fourth Wall / Last Nite / Arista, are:
| Album | Released | Chart (US / CAN) | Certifications |
|---|---|---|---|
| TV | May 20, 2021 | #168 US / #62 CAN | RIAA Gold, Music Canada Gold |
| HDTV | September 16, 2022 | — | — |
| 4K | January 19, 2024 | — | — |
Key singles across the catalog include “Stuck in the Middle” and its “Pt. II” featuring Kiana Ledé (2020, RIAA Gold, Music Canada Platinum, RMNZ Gold), “Drugs” (2020, RIAA Gold, Music Canada Platinum), “A-O-K” with a 24kGoldn remix and a Manuel Turizo version (2021, RIAA 3× Platinum, ARIA Platinum, BPI Silver, Music Canada 4× Platinum, RMNZ 2× Platinum), “Sheesh!” with Surfaces (2021, RIAA Gold), and later tracks including “LAst dAy oN EaRTh,” “sheluvme,” “how deep?,” “Sandman,” “All White,” “Stars” and “Pipe Down.” Genius credits him with 51 songs across his catalog to date.
Verdes occupies a hybrid space between bedroom pop, indie pop, alt-pop and hip-hop/R&B-inflected songwriting. Apple Music categorizes him as an “R&B/soul singer-songwriter,” while Wikipedia’s genre tags for him include indie pop, alternative rock and pop. His own SoundCloud bio describes an artist who “creates his own inimitable sound by combining high-spirited hip-hop, vibrant R&B, blissful soul, and much more.” Qobuz calls his sound on debut album TV “buoyant, laid-back pop… stylistically diverse,” blending pop, hip-hop and R&B.
His stylistic hallmark is DIY, lo-fi-adjacent bedroom production, much of it self-produced or co-produced within a small circle of collaborators, paired with conversational, diary-style lyricism about relationships and mental health. That mode places him alongside the broader 2019 to 2021 bedroom-pop wave that also produced peers like Claire Rosinkranz and Em Beihold. His idiosyncratic capitalization in song titles, such as “LAst dAy oN EaRTh,” “sheluvme” and “how deep?,” is a deliberate personal-identity marker; he has said he prefers unconventional casing because “no one else can replicate it.”
“A-O-K” reached number 34 on the Billboard Hot 100, number 4 on Hot Rock & Alternative Songs, number 21 on Adult Top 40, number 12 on Mainstream Top 40 airplay, and number 86 on the Billboard Global 200. Debut album TV reached number 168 on the Billboard 200, number 62 on the Canadian Albums chart, and number 3 on the Billboard Heatseekers Albums chart. He was at one point named Billboard’s “#1 Emerging Artist.” In 2021, Verdes was inducted into the RIAA’s Class of 2021 as a first-time Gold or Platinum certification recipient, alongside Olivia Rodrigo, for “A-O-K” and “Stuck in the Middle” both certifying Gold that year.
| Song / Release | RIAA credit | Certification date |
|---|---|---|
| A-O-K | TAI VERDES | July 23, 2025 (cumulative to 3× Platinum) |
| TV (album) | TAI VERDES | February 14, 2025 |
| SHEESH! | SURFACES AND TAI VERDES | August 30, 2024 |
| DRUGS | TAI VERDES | June 9, 2022 |
| STUCK IN THE MIDDLE | TAI VERDES | October 26, 2021 |
Spotify streaming data compiled via Kworb.net (checked mid-2026) shows “AOK” at roughly 471.9 million total streams, “Stuck In The Middle” at roughly 167.6 million, “DRUGS” at roughly 132.8 million, “last day on earth” at roughly 108.7 million, and “how deep?” at roughly 81.2 million. His total career Spotify streams across the catalog sit at roughly 1.34 billion as of mid-2026. Internationally, “A-O-K” carries Platinum certification in Australia, 4× Platinum in Canada, 2× Platinum in New Zealand, Silver in the UK, and 3× Platinum in the United States.
Verdes made his live debut at Lollapalooza in Chicago on July 30, 2021, performing on the Bud Light stage as well as an intimate Bud Light Seltzer Sessions set; he had joked beforehand that he expected to “pass out” onstage. He then opened for Chelsea Cutler and Quinn XCII immediately after Lollapalooza. His first headline tour, that same fall, sold out in minutes according to his booking bio.
His 2022 HDTV Headline Tour was a Live Nation-produced North American run of twenty to thirty-plus cities, opening March 28, 2022 in Fayetteville, Arkansas and closing May 22, 2022 at The Belasco in Los Angeles, with renforshort supporting on all North American dates. The tour extended into Europe and Australia over summer 2022 and added a large fall North American leg through October 2022. Documented festival appearances include Lollapalooza (Chicago 2021; Argentina and Chile, March 2022; Paris, July 2022), Okeechobee Music & Arts Festival, BottleRock Napa Valley, Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival, Reading & Leeds Festivals, Splendour in the Grass, Osheaga, Mo Pop Festival, Pukkelpop, Life Is Beautiful, Sea.Hear.Now, Austin City Limits Music Festival, Breakaway Festival, Oceans Calling Festival, Wonderfront Music & Arts Festival, Innings Festival, Seoul Jazz Festival (2023), and WonderStruck Festival (2023). He also performed at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in June 2023. Television appearances include Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the American Idol season finale in 2022 (the same show that had rejected him as a contestant), and the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in 2021.
His global booking agency is Wasserman Music, which also represents acts including Billie Eilish, Frank Ocean, SZA and Zedd. As of mid-2026, multiple ticketing platforms including Songkick, Bandsintown and Live Nation show no scheduled tour dates for 2025 or 2026 and state directly that he is not currently on tour.
His most important recurring collaborator is producer and songwriter Adam Friedman, who co-wrote and produced both “DRUGS” and “A-O-K” and executive-produced both TV and HDTV. Friedman has also worked with Mike Posner, Black Eyed Peas, Quinn XCII, Kesha, Allen Stone and filous. “Stuck in the Middle” was written and produced with redMOSK. Kiana Ledé featured on “Stuck in the Middle, Pt. II,” 24kGoldn featured on the “A-O-K” remix, and Manuel Turizo appeared on an alternate Latin-market version of the same song. Surfaces collaborated on the Gold-certified “Sheesh!,” and John Ryan, Julian Bunetta and Two Fresh Beats are credited as producers and writers on “how deep?”
Verdes also has a direct working credit with Claire Rosinkranz: he is credited with “Art Assist,” visual and creative direction, on the official visualizer for her 2022 song “i’m too pretty for this.” Promotional bios for Rosinkranz separately list Verdes among the peer artists who have supported her work, alongside Olivia Rodrigo, Lexi Jayde and 347aidan. Rosinkranz’s own breakout, “Backyard Boy” in 2020, followed the same TikTok-to-viral-to-major-label pipeline as Verdes’s, placing the two artists in the same cohort of TikTok-launched pop acts even though she signed to Republic/slowplay rather than Arista.
Verdes and Em Beihold were parallel discoveries of the same McClain Portis pipeline: Portis has said he found Beihold independently around the same 2020 to 2021 window via a TikTok video of her performing “City of Angels,” later working with her toward what became her viral hit “Numb Little Bug.” No public account documents Verdes and Beihold collaborating directly, but both are alumni of the same Live2/“Art Not Algorithms” discovery apparatus in the same narrow window.
Also inside that same 2020 TikTok-viral cohort was Christian Gates, a singer-songwriter whose own charm and candor made him a viral social media presence that same year. Gates was pulled into the Los Angeles scene from Orange County through the same Live 2 Create operation that Portis used to coach Verdes, and the two artists were part of the same Live2 cohort during that era.
Verdes signed to Arista Records, a Sony Music Entertainment label, in late 2020 following the success of “Stuck in the Middle.” His releases have also carried co-credit from the boutique imprints Fourth Wall LLC and Last Nite, operating under exclusive license to Arista, a common hybrid deal structure. He has said he chose Arista specifically because it offered creative control and masters ownership, reportedly turning down interest from Atlantic and Warner: “I already own my masters. I’m determined to have that control.”
He signed a global publishing deal with Kobalt Music Group in January 2022, described in coverage as artist-friendly. Retrospective reporting on TikTok-to-fame artists has described Verdes and his team deliberately avoiding a lengthy, multi-album lock-in, instead securing a short-term, release-by-release arrangement with Arista that preserved his long-term masters ownership. As of his January 2024 release “Pipe Down,” Sony Music Canada’s press materials described him as a “Double Platinum artist,” and a February 2023 Variety interview with Arista Records chief David Massey referenced Verdes’s two Gold singles in the context of describing the label’s roster success stories.
His manager is Ryan Chisholm, CEO of Head Coach Music Group, which also manages Foggieraw and producer Adam Friedman; a 2022 interview additionally describes his management circle overlapping with the team that represents Mike Posner. His global booking agency is Wasserman Music.
On January 19, 2024, Verdes released the single “Pipe Down” via Arista Records, billed as the closing chapter of his self-described TV/HDTV/4K trilogy, with the accompanying album 4K arriving around the same window. Since then, no new original single, album announcement, or confirmed tour date has surfaced publicly. Concert-tracking platforms including Songkick, Bandsintown, Live Nation and Hypebot all confirm no scheduled shows for 2024, 2025 or 2026.
His back catalog, however, remains active from a certification standpoint: “A-O-K” and the TV album received re-certification entries in the RIAA database dated February and July 2025 respectively, and “Sheesh!” with Surfaces certified Gold in August 2024. Kworb.net streaming data checked in 2026 shows “AOK” still generating more than 111,000 streams a day, with his catalog overall pulling roughly 292,000 streams a day, a durable, catalog-driven presence even without a current release cycle. In February 2025 he posted a brief, cryptic message on X: “2026 I’m sweeping.” No confirmed release or tour has followed that post as of mid-2026. He has previously summarized his own long-term intent plainly: “I’m in it for a 20-year long career, not a song.”
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1995 | Born Tyler James Colon, December 6. |
| 2017 | Wins MTV’s Are You the One? Season 6, earning $50,000. |
| 2020 | Works at a Verizon Wireless store; posts “Stuck in the Middle” on TikTok, which goes viral; discovered and coached by McClain Portis of Live2; signs to Arista Records. |
| 2021 | Releases debut album TV and single “A-O-K”; makes live debut at Lollapalooza; opens for Chelsea Cutler and Quinn XCII; inducted into RIAA Class of 2021 alongside Olivia Rodrigo. |
| 2022 | Signs global publishing deal with Kobalt Music Group; releases second album HDTV; embarks on the HDTV Headline Tour with renforshort; performs at the American Idol finale. |
| 2023 | Performs at Red Rocks Amphitheatre and international festivals including Seoul Jazz Festival and WonderStruck Festival. |
| 2024 | Releases “Pipe Down” and closing trilogy album 4K via Arista Records. |
| 2025 | “A-O-K” and the TV album receive RIAA re-certifications; posts cryptic “2026 I’m sweeping” teaser. |
No. He was born Tyler James Colon. “Tai” is a stylized respelling of his nickname “Ty,” and “Verdes” references Palos Verdes, California, where he lived.
“Stuck in the Middle” (2020) was his first viral TikTok moment, hitting number one on Spotify’s US Viral Chart within weeks of posting. “A-O-K” (2021) became his bigger chart and radio hit and remains his most-streamed song.
McClain Portis of Live2 (Live 2 Create) discovered Verdes after Verdes direct-messaged him roughly a week before “Stuck in the Middle” dropped, then coached him on the TikTok strategy that drove the song’s streams from roughly 1,000 to 300,000 a day.
Arista Records, a Sony Music Entertainment label, since late 2020, with releases co-credited to the imprints Fourth Wall and Last Nite. As of his most recent confirmed release in January 2024, he remained affiliated with Arista.
As of mid-2026, ticketing platforms including Songkick, Bandsintown and Live Nation show no scheduled tour dates for 2025 or 2026.
Verdes’s reception has consistently emphasized the authenticity of his rise rather than conventional critical framing: NPR’s Planet Money, Stereogum and the BBC each profiled him specifically as a case study in TikTok-native, DIY pop stardom, tracking his path from Verizon clerk to Billboard chart presence within about a year. His catalog’s continued RIAA certification activity through 2024 and 2025, even without new original music, points to a durable streaming audience built on his two signature songs, “Stuck in the Middle” and “A-O-K,” which together account for the large majority of his roughly 1.34 billion career Spotify streams.
Further reading: Tai Verdes’s discovery by McClain Portis places him alongside other Live2-era artists including Em Beihold and, in the same 2020 TikTok cohort, Christian Gates. His creative partnership with Claire Rosinkranz and his shared RIAA Class of 2021 induction with Olivia Rodrigo further situate him within the broader bedroom-pop-to-major-label wave of the early 2020s.