Nicole ’16, A YouTube Sensation

When Nicole first recorded herself, covering pop songs on the ukulele from her home in NYC, she never imagined that the internet would be watching—let alone that YouTube users would flock in droves to her channel .

Over 9 million video views, 22,000 FB likes, and 91,000 subscribers later the Appleton resident and likely comp sci major is still in shock.

The internet can’t get enough of Nicole’s videos–and neither can we—so I sat down with her to find out the story behind her unique talent.

“All of this is for my friends,” she explained. Before she covered Nicki Minaj’s ‘Superbass’ her videos were hovering around 200 views—most of them from acquaintances.

All of that changed with one tumblr post by joycakes.tumblr.com, a tumblr user identified simply as ‘Helen’ who’s in the league of the “tumblr famous.” With just that one post, Nicole’s YouTube channel views suddenly skyrocketed.

“Overnight it just went crazy,” Nicole explains, “ I couldn’t sleep but my friends were texting me ‘you’re on reddit!’” Nicole’s sweet rendition of ‘Super Bass’ was even posted on RyanSeacrest.com. 

The attention was surreal, and—knowing the volatility of the internet—the musician wondered what would happen if things went sour: “If you’re really bad then people hate on you and keep hating on you. I kind of hid myself from the internet for a while and it took me time to get really comfortable.”

According to Nicole, stage fright has confined the majority of her performances to YouTube because she can film them in the comfort of her own home. However, the ukulele player—who is self-taught—hasn’t ruled out the possibility of new recordings while she’s at Bowdoin.

“I definitely want to, but I don’t know when or where or if people will be bothered by it…Bowdoin isn’t as familiar yet, so I think it’ll take time,” she explains.