Get Ready With Me: How GRWM Became Music’s New Mood Board

GRWM, short for “Get Ready With Me,” is one of the most enduring and influential formats to emerge from social media-a hybrid of vlog, makeup tutorial, music sync, and lifestyle commentary.

What began in the 2010s as a YouTube staple has evolved into a genre of its own across TikTok, Reels, and YouTube Shorts.

But GRWM isn’t just a format anymore. With over 73 million uses on TikTok alone, it’s a cultural signal, a new kind of performance space, and now, a marketing goldmine.

The premise is simple: a person invites viewers to watch them get ready-for a date, a job interview, a breakdown, or just a Tuesday.

What makes it sticky isn’t the makeup technique or hair curl pattern.

It’s the intimacy. GRWM creators are confessional, funny, chaotic, deadpan, aspirational, or deliberately low-fi.

And audiences stick around because they’re not just being shown a routine, they’re being included in it.

The impact of GRWM on the beauty and lifestyle industries is hard to overstate.

According to Later.com’s glossary, GRWM videos routinely outperform other content types in reach and engagement.

They blur the line between influencer and friend, tutorial and storytime.

Brands have noticed. e.l.f. Cosmetics, long known for its social media savviness, took the format to a new level with “Get Ready With Music: The Album” – a first-of-its-kind campaign created under its media division, e.l.f. Entertainment.

Framed as a marketing project rather than a standalone music venture, the 2024 album features original tracks from artists like Betty Who, Tasty Lopez, and Black Gatsby, each song designed to soundtrack the rituals of self-expression. Not just a vibe – a full ecosystem.

The idea worked. e.l.f. earned a 2024 Shorty Award for its GRWM campaign, and as Marketing Dive reports, the brand’s bold foray into music marked the debut of e.l.f. Entertainment, a full-on content division.

This was less about pushing eyeliner and more about owning the cultural moment.

The strategy? Meet consumers not just where they shop, but where they create.

Beauty brands like Rare Beauty and Fenty have followed suit, crafting content strategies around GRWM-adjacent aesthetics.

As Made Music Studio outlines, music is now central to beauty brand strategy, used not just as background but as emotional glue between product and audience.

According to Content Kettle’s Rare Beauty strategy breakdown, Rare Beauty regularly encourages its community to share GRWM videos featuring its blushes and foundations.

The focus is less about music and more about user-generated content and emotional openness, positioning the brand as a facilitator of candid, everyday beauty stories.

Selena Gomez herself has filmed GRWM segments that blur the lines between celebrity and creator.

The underlying psychology is clear: you trust the people you get ready with.

What makes GRWM videos especially sticky in 2025 is their cross-genre flexibility.

There are GRWM’s for sad days, for career wins, for hot-girl walks and hot mess mornings.

@looooooooch Lazy day GRWM #Inverted ♬ original sound – leah halton

Some feature high-gloss editing and sponsored tags; others are filmed on cracked iPhones with voiceovers recorded in one breath.

What links them isn’t polish, but presence. You’re not watching a commercial, you’re witnessing a moment-sometimes carefully curated, sometimes hilariously real.

The rise of GRWM music further cements the format’s longevity. Artists featured on e.l.f.’s album-including emerging names like Alana and Dianna Lopez-have tailored songs to match the emotional beats of getting ready: anticipation, doubt, confidence, reflection.

As People reports, these aren’t background bops; they’re engineered to energise routines and elevate everyday moments.

Spotify featured curated Get Ready With Music playlists tied to the e.l.f. album launch, confirming platform-level support for GRWM content.

With over 1.6 billion impressions and millions of engagements across TikTok and YouTube Shorts, GRWM videos clearly dominate discoverability even if platform algorithms aren’t explicitly acknowledged as favouring them.

Fan commentary on Reddit threads like r/BeautyGuruChatter and TikTok comment sections reveals how viewers gravitate to specific GRWM creators for comfort, honesty, and routine-building.

On Reddit one user confessed “I literally never wear makeup but I love the beauty world and watching beautubers” and described watching GRWM as calming ritual rather than product learning.

Another thread speculated on how the format provides dopamine regulation for neurodivergent users: predictable steps, calming sounds, low-stakes visuals.

With brands creating original albums, fans using the format for mental health, and platforms continuing to prioritise it in discovery algorithms, GRWM is no longer just a social media trend.

It’s a cultural mirror, and like all good mirrors, it reflects a lot more than makeup.

It shows us how we want to be seen, and who we’re willing to be vulnerable in front of.

For a deeper breakdown of the format’s meaning and evolution, see GRWM Meaning: Exploring the Trendy Social Media Hashtag.

Will GRWM remain a beauty-first genre, or will it evolve into something closer to a daily life diary-a genre where emotion, identity, and music merge into micro-theatre? One thing is clear: getting ready has never sounded so good.