Five contemporary musicians who were signed after “going viral”
At this point, describing the internet as a “good” or “bad” thing is as redundant as describing whether our atmosphere is a “good” or “bad” thing. That we have the entirety of human knowledge and a way of contacting anyone on the planet in our back pocket is the very foundation of modern life. It takes the best and worst aspects of ourselves and spews it back at us in a way that we’re barely prepared for by making it all “go viral”, for want of a better phrase. At least, for the most part, the music’s been good.
The first entertainment industry to truly be rocked by the internet was music. The same as it ever was, really, the music industry has always been the canary in the coal mine for every other industry. Independent record labels predated independent film studios. Tape trading was coming for the music industry long before movie piracy was a widespread issue. More optimistically, the internet also showed how it could make the careers of up-and-coming musicians long before any other art form.
This list could have technically included the likes of Arctic Monkeys, Lily Allen, and the myriad of other artists whose break came from uploading their demos to MySpace and the like. However, we chose to focus on artists whose work online didn’t just get them in line for a record deal; it was also the very thing that broke them in the public eye.
Here, we’re looking at five artists who went viral long before they received their first record deal and the myriad of ways that the internet can make an artist’s career today.
Five musicians signed after “viral” success:
Lil Nas X
Arguably the first genuine star to be born this way—and perhaps the one who did it best—Lil Nas X redefined what a modern pop star could be. The Atlanta native, born Montero Hill in 1999, represented a new, youthful wave of pop stardom forming before our very eyes—a youthquake not unlike the one Lorde had sparked a few years earlier. However, her breakthrough had major label backing, while Nas had none. Instead, his rise was fuelled by a distinctly 21st-century phenomenon—one that didn’t just use social media but understood it.
Nas was, after all, a Twitter phenomenon long before his big break in 2018. His social media savvy—and the razor-sharp sense of humour he honed as a long-time member of Nicki Minaj’s formidable fanbase, the Barbz—helped ‘Old Town Road’ go viral on TikTok. Although the song was released in December 2018, by July 2019, it had been played on the platform a staggering 67 million times. Needless to say, this led to an intense bidding war for his signature, which Columbia ultimately won in March 2019.
Benson Boone
Lil Nas speaks to the weirdo outsiders who luck into a chart-destroying hit that wouldn’t have been possible at any other time. However, social media has also unearthed several artists who could have achieved success at any point in time. Benson Boone is one of those artists. Possessed of a powerful, versatile voice, the kind of body that got him a spot on his high school competitive diving team and a backflip that won’t quit, Boone is an old-school entertainer through and through.
It could have all been so different for him, too. After taking up singing by being pushed into his high school battle of the bands, Boone got a spot on season 19 of American Idol in 2021. However, despite high praise from the judges and getting deep into the competition, Boone wanted to take a punt on himself as an artist, not just a singer. This was absolutely the right choice, as he’d go on to amass 1.7 million followers on TikTok before signing with Warner Records.
Dave
There’s an argument to be made that no individual genre has been as affected by the internet and social media quite like hip-hop. Which makes sense, the very foundation of hip-hop came from new technology being adapted for self-expression. Back in the late 1970s, it was turntables and vinyl records. Today, it’s production software and YouTube, and nowhere is this best shown than by the origin story of one of British rap’s biggest success stories, Dave.
Born David Omoregie in Brixton, it was a set of freestyles Dave recorded for the YouTube channel Blackbox at the age of 17 that first got him noticed by noted culture vulture Drake. The Canadian megastar then tapped him up for a slot on the soundtrack to the Netflix series Top Boy, which got him noticed by the late great SB.TV mogul Jamal Edwards. Edwards reached out to Dave, and together, they made the video for his debut single, ‘JKYL+HYD’, which got him signed by the independent label Neighbourhood Records shortly afterwards.
Saweetie
Santa Clara native Diamonté Harper, otherwise known as rapper Saweetie, had hip-hop literally in her blood. Her mother, Trinidad Valentin, was a model and dancer who gained fame for her appearances in several hip-hop videos in the late 1990s, appearing for the likes of DMX and Nelly at the peak of their powers. After finishing her degree in 2016, she began working on a music career of her own, posting her freestyles to Instagram.
One in particular, set to the beat for Khia’s ‘My Neck, My Back’, went down so well that she reworked it into a full-length song, her breakout single ‘Icy Girl’. By June 2020, the song had received over a hundred million views on YouTube and brought her to the attention of A&R executive Max Gousse. Gousse would become her manager, and their work culminated in a record deal with Warner Bros in May 2019.
Billie Eilish
I mean, who else could it be? Lil Nas X may have the song most associated with viral success translating into real-world triumph, but Billie Eilish—one of the biggest acts in modern music—has to be the artist most synonymous with it. It’s become a tired, misogynistic cliché to call her an “industry plant” simply because her mother was an extra in a few sitcoms in the late 1990s. In reality, the seeds of Eilish’s success were planted in her childhood bedroom, where she and her brother Finneas crafted songs and uploaded them to SoundCloud in 2015.
The breakthrough came with a song called ‘Ocean Eyes’. Originally written by Finneas for his band The Slightlys, he decided to see how it would sound coming from his 13-year-old sister, Billie. It sounded great, so they recorded it and uploaded it to SoundCloud. Within two weeks, the song had been played several hundred thousand times, giving the siblings a calling card they could take anywhere. Within a year, Billie Eilish had signed to Interscope as a solo artist, with her brother by her side.
