We continue our tour through the libraries of YouTube to discover three more artists that got their start on the Juggernaut website.
For creators and fans of online video, alike, the weekend of June 21st is a special one. A celebration of the YouTube creators, the online stars, and the audiences that support them, VidCon 2018 will mark its 9th year in the pantheon of internet pop culture. It will feature all manner of major YouTube creators — from newsmakers to news reporters; from vloggers to actors to personalities that have crossed over into the mainstream, to everyone in between.
This includes the many musicians who have either made their names on YouTube, or are giving it their best shot. Whether it’s song covers or original music, you can find some of the most talented music makers in the annals of YouTube.
I’ve covered some of the notable creators in the YouTube music catalog in an earlier article. Here are a few more examples of musicians who got their start, and have found a loyal following in online video:
Jon Cozart
Main YT Channel: Paint
A former University of Texas-Austin film student from Little Rock, Arkansas, Jon Cozart started his current YouTube channel, “Paint,” in 2010, when he posted his first video — an original Ukulele piece called “Share The Love.” The 26-year-old artist had been posting to YouTube since 2005, when he was in the seventh grade, but it was his 2011 video, “Harry Potter in 99 Seconds,” that launched him into the YouTube spotlight. Since its release, it has garnered over 42.3 million views. Interestingly enough, however, Cozart didn’t even start his YouTube career as a way to showcase his music — in fact, he began his first channel as a way to avoid writing papers in middle school, opting instead to make videos.
And while Cozart has admitted that he has no formal music experience (other than piano lessons when he was little), his YouTube career in music has been a successful one. Despite only having 36 videos on his channel, and having huge gaps between postings (the time between his latest video and the one before it, for example, is a whopping 553 days), he still holds a total of around 4,353,000 subscribers.
He has done it with his series of highly-successful music parodies, chronicling potential real-life consequences of beloved Disney characters living in contemporary society, “After Ever After”:
Combining a classic a cappella sound to a contemporary take on classic Disney themes, Cozart has helped cultivate the song parody genre on YouTube in his own unique way. Each of said videos take around a month to put together, between writing all the lyrics himself, filming and editing. Despite the time it takes, the execution comes off flawlessly, and they are immensely popular, judging by the over 141.5 million combined views for his three “After Ever After” videos. He has since collaborated with other such YouTube artists as Dodie Clark (whom we’ve talked about in an earlier article) and Tessa Violet on their 2016 Transatlantic Tour, and has participated in countless video collaborations with creators all over the platform.
Meytal Cohen
Main YT Channel: Meytalll
After filming and posting 9 years worth of drum covers onto the World Wide Web, Meytal Cohen has steadily made a name for herself as one of the premier metal drummers both on YouTube and in the mainstream. Born in Ramat Gan, Israel on August 9, 1983, and raised by a widowed mother as the youngest of seven, Meytal had a passion for drumming since the age of 7. Her mother, however, diverted her attention to tap dancing as a child.
It wasn’t until age 17 that her boyfriend at the time unlocked her dormant passion for drumming when he bought her a Pantera CD, and she couldn’t get enough. She started drumming at the age of 18 — around the same time she was drafted to the Israeli Defense Force on mandatory military service.
After serving two years with the IDF, Meytal came to America, and studied percussion at the Los Angeles Music Academy. Upon graduation, she formed a new-age rock band, Metaphor, with cellist Tina Guo, violinist Anna Stafford, and pianist Ali Wood, and toured internationally in 2007.
Despite this, making it big in the Los Angeles music scene proved difficult for Meytal, and, as a result, she spent a bulk of her time and energy making drum cover videos on YouTube. She did everything from Foo Fighters to Rush to Avenged Sevenfold to Paramore. She even did a cover of a viral Gregory Brothers song, for good measure.
But it was a collaboration she did in 2009 with electric violinists Christine Wu and Jennifer Lynn, ultimately as an audition video for “America’s Got Talent” that never went anywhere, that got her noticed by the internet at large:
The video has garnered over 11 million views as of June 2018, on a main channel that has over 220 million total views, and a following of over 1.2 million subscribers. As a result of her large and loyal following, Meytal has attended TEDx Talks, has been able to record her own original music, and has managed to launch a debut album in 2015.
Tori Kelly
Main YT Channel: Tori Kelly
Born and raised in Wildomar, California, Victoria Loren Kelly — or, rather, her more recognizable moniker, Tori Kelly — is well-known by the music-loving general public. Whether it’s from her run in Season 9 of “American Idol” that ended at the Top 24, or her recent string of commercials for Nationwide Insurance, Kelly’s voice is a powerhouse that was wrongly dismissed by Simon Cowell as “almost annoying,” and one that has sold tens of thousands of records.
Despite her commercial success — including a turn as shy teenage elephant Meena in the 2016 animated film Sing! — Kelly had humble beginnings in the annals of YouTube. She grew up in a musical family, where her mother played saxophone and keyboard, and her father was proficient at singing and bass. Impacted by R&B artists like Lauryn Hill and Jill Scott, Kelly also grew up in a Christian household, where a major musical influence was gospel music. After a successful appearance on America’s Most Talented Kids in 2004, she signed a deal with Geffen Records that ultimately dissolved shortly thereafter.
After her American Idol experience, Kelly decided to take a different approach to musical success: she learned to play guitar, and proceeded to record videos for YouTube. From live performances to song covers, Kelly slowly built a large following — one that has grown to more than 1.4 million subscribers, with her channel racking up almost 166 million total views (as of June 2018). She is one of the more well-known YouTube artists that had crossed over into mainstream music success.