Hastings's very own global TikTok sensation scores millions of hits
Imagine it gets viewed tens of thousands of times within hours.
And then imagine a couple of months later it’s been viewed nearly 20 million times on TikTok and nearly two million more on YouTube.
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Hide AdThat’s the surreal situation facing 19-year-old Hastings singer Shelbie Haddon.
It presents an incredible opportunity, a fantastic platform for potential future success. For the moment, in discussion with her new manager, Shelbie is deciding what next.
“It has all been a bit mad! I have posted singing videos on things like Instagram and stuff like that before, and I knew there was this TikTok app that I knew was popular, but had never posted anything on it.
“And then I heard this song in my car, and I loved it and I sang a bit of it and put it on TikTok and it went viral. I did my own version of You Broke Me First by Tate McRae, just a bit of it, and I put a video of me singing the chorus on TikTok.
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Hide Ad“It was a Saturday night, and I go to a little club that my granddad runs, and I went to pick up my aunty to go there, and for a while I had something like ten likes, just like my friends, and then all of a sudden it went mad, and my phone was just pinging, pinging, pinging.
“I had all these notifications coming through, and I was thinking ‘What is happening here?’ I looked and I had something like 10,000 views. I have never had that kind of recognition before… and it just carried on and carried on and carried on. By the end of the evening it was something like 100,000, and it just grew and grew.”
She’s now on very nearly 20 million views.
“You just imagine something like that happening to you, but it was incredible. Every day for weeks I was waking up to three or four new celebrities having liked it. It is great. It is what I have always wanted to do. It just went crazy.
“And then people were saying ‘Shelbie, why don’t you do the full version?’ I did. I recorded the full version. I did it basically with a backing track. And then this guy messages me from Paris who does production work in music and he said ‘Do you want me to do a more professional version so that you can get it on Spotify?’ He did. I also posted the song on YouTube and it has got nearly two million hits on there.
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Hide Ad“It has just gone insane. I couldn’t keep up with all the emails. I was getting emails from the labels. I even had a telephone call from Warner Records.
“I had to deal with all of that on my own, and that’s when I got my new manager.”
For the moment, it’s best to say simply that they are exploring the possibilities together: “I am currently working as a support worker, caring for people. It is a great opportunity, but I am just currently trying to think what I want to do.”
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