London Launch for YouTube Ukulele Star
By Philip Harrison
Last week London welcomed an American musical sensation from across the Atlantic – she’s blonde, she’s bubbly and she plays the ukulele?
The self-proclaimed “geek” from New York state has made her name covering bands from The Beatles to Kanye West on video site YouTube and has already notched 20 million views.
Last week she played a handful of intimate gigs in the capital but found time to talk to newspark about London, YouTube fame and her starving goldfish.
“London is the place where I realise I can actually be a musician. I met so many cool people there and was shown the city. London as a whole is really fascinating, the people, the architecture…man I sound like such a geek saying that”.
At only 20, Julia Nunes already has a gruelling schedule of gigs and festivals to fit around her university work.
“In term time I’ll travel to some other college, or some other venue, club or coffee house most weekends. I’ve done entire essays backstage at a show or whilst driving” – though she‘s quick to correct herself when she hears my shock – “oh wait but I wasn’t the one behind the wheel, I haven’t tried that one yet anyway.”
Over the past year Julia’s support has grown to over 100,000 subscribers on YouTube though when I quizzed her she jokingly admitted she could only guarantee having met “less than half of them”.
On her unique choice of instrument – the ukulele – “It’s a fantastically simple instrument. It suits me as I like to hear the song stripped down rather than all the instrumentation that goes into the songs that end up on the radio.”
The YouTube “community” has been kind to Julia as she admits without it she would probably be a camp counsellor this summer; but she is still shocked about how it all came about.
“The point of YouTube for me, at the beginning, was that I’d just left for college and had left all my best friends.
“I wanted to show them the songs I was writing and covering but I didn’t want to put it on facebook so that everyone from my highschool could see it. I put it on YouTube assuming that noone would ever find it aside from my three friends I was sending it to; it backfired.”
Two years on and with 20 million views on YouTube has she managed to translate the internet attention to a glamorous student lifestyle?
“It’s more for the love of playing and doing stuff, but it is cool to get paid.
“Doing it on your own it’s kind of a big money in and big money out deal. I’m spending a lot of money getting to places, recording and equipment.
“My big splurge for today was that I bought my goldfish some fish food cause for a while there they were going without.”
As well as starving goldfish Julia also let slip that she often doesn’t wear ‘pants’ (trousers) when recording her videos.
“I get really hot when I’m singing so if I’m playing a song over and over again I tend to get too warm to wear pants”
After suggesting she might get some unwanted attention if she tried that at her London gigs I’m assured she’s been gigging fully clothed ever since.
Julia’s videos can be found at www.youtube.com/jaaaaaaa with more information at www.junumusic.com.
