![\"Issue39-betty-who\"](\"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Issue39-betty-who.jpg\")
<\/h1>\n<\/h1>\nEven if you don\u2019t recognize her name, you\u2019d likely recognize Betty Who\u2019s breakout hit \u201cSomebody Loves You,\u201d which played as the backdrop of a 2013 viral video of a man proposing to his boyfriend in Home Depot while dancing with a flash mob. \u201cEven today, people are falling in love with that song for the first time,\u201d says the Australian singer-songwriter of the amateur clip that amassed nearly 13 million YouTube views.<\/p>\n
Who\u2013born Jessica Newham\u2014was one of the first to watch the uplifting video. \u201cBefore it went up, they emailed it to my manager asking if they could use the song. That night, after we gave our OK and it went public, it had almost a million views.\u201d The song was initially released in 2012 via an independent EP, but Who signed with RCA just four days after the proposal was uploaded. The sudden success led the classically trained cellist to drop out of Boston\u2019s Berklee College of Music just weeks before graduation to move to New York.<\/p>\n
In 2014, nearly a year and a half after its release, \u201cSomebody Loves You\u201d went to No. 1 on Billboard\u2019s Dance Club Songs chart. The slow build allowed Who to focus on her major-label debut, Take Me When You Go<\/i>. \u201cIf the song had been a huge, out-of-the-gate hit, I would have had nothing to follow it up with,\u201d says the 6-foot-1 singer. \u201cI was challenged by the people I worked with. I wasn\u2019t allowed to settle\u2014if a line wasn\u2019t perfect, I wouldn\u2019t rest until it was. I enjoyed that process.\u201d<\/p>\n
With a sound evoking dance-pop of the 1980s and \u201990s, Who name-checks such artists as Michael Jackson, Madonna and Whitney Houston as influences, peppering the list with singer-songwriters Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan. But she\u2019s most often compared to Swedish pop star Robyn because of her retro-dance hooks and platinum-blond poof of hair.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a huge fan, but I didn\u2019t go in saying we should make this sound like Robyn, says Who, 23. \u201cIf anything, I said we should make it sound like Mariah Carey meets Phil Collins.\u201d<\/p>\n
But how exactly does a classically trained cellist turn into a dance-pop diva? \u201cIt may seem like a stretch, but to me they were married. My whole life was about music\u2014not just classical\u2014so genres didn\u2019t mean anything to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013Katy Kroll<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BETTY WHO A popular viral video leads to a major-label debut for a dance-pop diva Even if you don\u2019t recognize her name, you\u2019d likely recognize Betty Who\u2019s breakout hit \u201cSomebody Loves You,\u201d which played as the backdrop of a 2013 viral video of a man proposing to his boyfriend in Home Depot while dancing with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[7674,7623],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14749"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14749"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14751,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14749\/revisions\/14751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}