X Was My Color

About

X Was My Color, also known as My Life Was Black and White Before I Met Him / Her or He / She Was The Color, is a TikTok trend and CapCut template in which the participants are shown to be with their significant other, love interest or pets under a black-and-white filter before having it change to color after they entered their life. The trend, which started in August 2024, became used to show things that spark joy in the user's life.

Origin

The background audio, which uses the line "my life was black and white before I met Sonya, she was the color," comes from the movie A Man Called Otto, which was released on January 13th, 2023. In the scene, the main character, Otto, is telling his new friend Marisol about his life and his past wife, Sonya.

On March 8th, 2023, the scene was uploaded to YouTube by the channel Scene City,^[1] where it gained over 164,000 views in one year (shown below).

This audio remained relatively unused until the August 12th, 2024, TikTok uploaded by TikToker jhanellejusto,^[2] who posted it unedited but used on-screen text to change the meaning to be about her boyfriend. The TikTok, which used a CapCut filter to transition from a black-and-white scene to a colorized one with the accompanying change in on-screen text created the first instance of the trend, leading many others to adopt it over the following months (shown below).

Spread

The sound immediately started to spread around the site, with many different people creating their own romantic hype edits of their loved ones.

On October 23rd, 2024, the TikToker liftedlay^[3] uploaded a TikTok of their boyfriend while he was washing the windshield of the car, with the color returning to the video as he looks in the camera following his squeegee of the window, and earning over 137,000 likes in six days (shown below).

As the trend continued to spread, its original usage started to evolve. Instead of it being used only when referring to a lover or a person, TikTokers started to use the sound and CapCut template to mean anything that sparked joy in their lives.

On October 24th, 2024, TikToker kanethexlbully^[4] uploaded a TikTok of them saying that their XL Bully Dog was the color that their life needed, earning over 600 likes in five days (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References