Clairo: the poster girl of internet stardom
In the summer of 2017, 19-year-old Claire Cottrill, also known as Clairo, uploaded a video of herself singing a song called ‘Pretty Girl’ in her bedroom. It was a lo-fi indie pop track about the pressures of being pretty, one that would excel in its simplicity. Accompanied by a montage of a bare-faced Cottrill fresh out of bed, the video’s description declared, “It’s OK to be silly and stupid”.
Cottrill had been releasing under the moniker of Clairo for years, starting out recording covers in her early teens before releasing and mixing on Bandcamp and SoundCloud. But it was the quiet genius of ‘Pretty Girl’ that would finally catapult her into the cultural conversation. As interest in bedroom pop, vaporwave and lo-fi boomed, ‘Pretty Girl’ endeared itself to the ever-unpredictable YouTube algorithm and “went viral” – it currently stands at 93 million streams.
Clairo skillfully rode the wave of success, following the single up with a number of similarly low-production indie pop numbers, including the intimate ‘Flaming Hot Cheetos’ and the slightly more uptempo ‘4EVER’. Sticking to the combination of simple, relatable lyrics and bouncy bedroom pop that launched her into internet fame, Clairo curbed her potential one-hit wonder status and cultivated the ongoing interest of fans and labels alike. Long before the advent of TikTok, Clairo was one of the first considerable stars to come from social media virality.
Her status as an internet darling has been relatively consistent ever since. Amidst a pop scene often characterised by excess – in production and in look – Clairo was a breath of fresh air. Internet users flocked to her effortlessly cool, understated bedroom pop in the millions. Clairo thrived on reliability – she was around the same age as much of her growing fanbase, and, like them, she grew up on the internet. Her aesthetic was just as uncomplicated and unpolished as her music, embracing being “silly and stupid”; she was the ultimate girl next door.
Perhaps the biggest hiccup Clairo has experienced in the course of her internet stardom came soon after the Fader Label offered her a record deal. The young artist’s quick-found success garnered countless accusations that she was an industry plant, given that her father, Geoff Cottrill, is a huge marketing executive with industry connections. Her associations certainly afforded her more opportunities than the average Soundcloud musician, but it was also the unpredictable nature of social media that led the way.
Clairo addressed the dispute in an interview with Rolling Stone, in which she acknowledged the favourable position she began her career: “I am definitely not blind to the fact that things have been easier for me than other people’s experiences,” she said. “It would be stupid of me not to acknowledge the privilege I had from the start to be able to sign somewhere where there’s trust, to be able to sign a record deal that doesn’t revolve around keeping myself afloat financially.”
So Clairo successfully avoided the seemingly unavoidable fates of fast-found internet fame: becoming a one-hit wonder or being denounced as an industry plant. Rather, she continued to prove her place in modern music with Immunity in 2019. Her debut record honed and expanded her intimate, bedroom pop sound in collaboration with indie legends Rostam Batmanglij from Vampire Weekend and Daniel Haim.
The intimate album charted Cottrill’s personal struggles with bisexuality and chronic disease, between lyrics tailored to an internet audience like, “I was 15 when I first felt loneliness, cut my hair, only listened to loveless”. Retaining a lo-fi feel in its production and with lyrics that were at once personal and relatable, Immunity became a soft girl staple and a bedroom pop classic.
Since then, Clairo’s career has only bloomed. By the time she recorded her sophomore record, Sling, which was released in 2021, Clairo was working with the likes of pop legend Jack Antonoff. Most recently, she supported the sad girl supergroup Boygenius on a number of dates across the United States. Clairo has seamlessly transitioned from a genuine bedroom pop artist, making beats from under her duvet, to an international pop star. She’s matured from a Soundcloud teen to a sophisticated, considered and established musician with some of the most significant production around while retaining those elements that gained her popularity in the first place.
It’s rare to see a career progression as smooth as Clairo’s. Through her enduring relatability and internet-tailored sound, Cottrill has managed to avoid the pitfalls of internet stardom. It’s a stormy landscape, but Clairo has weathered it masterfully.
