Last year, I started taking my Kurrent Music blogs, and the music news I was writing for my own website, to YouTube by creating weekly vlogs. It was a lot of fun to do, but the editing took so much time and, after about 4 months into it, I started having conflicts with my work schedule to create the videos on time and, without a word to my not so large audience (sorry peeps!), had to stop the vlogs.
Luckily, there are other people so much more consistent with it and one of them is a girl called Djamila. Unlike me, with my 30 subscribers, she’s been able to become one of the more popular vloggers on YouTube in the Netherlands. With over 600,000 subscribers and some vlogs hitting over 1 million views, you can call her one of YouTube’s superstars.
In her vlogs, she’s just a crazy girl who tries out teenage stuff, from trying something new in makeup products to talking about candy… a lot. She’s native Dutch, but lives in the States, which makes it even more interesting for kids who live in the Netherlands. We in Europe are fascinated by the States and I’m beginning to think that Americans are slowly taking a fascination to Europe nowadays.
I had actually not heard of her until last week when a video of a somewhat awkward looking young singer caught my eye with her video “Brickwall”. It was Djamila. I wanted to blog about her and stumbled upon all her vlogs instead of a music biography or anything else. I had never run into a situation like that. I mean, every artist usually has a biography. Djamila doesn’t need one. After all, her music video hit over 1,4 million views in its first week. No introduction necessary.
In the video for “Brickwall” I sense a lot of inexperience as an artist. I feel she’s reluctant to let go and perform the song, somehow, which makes part of the video look a little bit like a girl dressed up as an artist rather than her being an artist. That said, there are parts where she needs to act and I actually think she’s really good at that in the video.
But I really have to admit, that this is the only negative I can find and I think you can’t even really call that a negative at all, because she is just starting out as an artists and a music video slightly different from vlogging. Believe me, I know.
The song itself is so good for a debut song and her singing is really up to par. Djamila has shared her singing, on occasions and I think she might initiate a new era where it’s not the DJs who are the next pop stars, it’s the vloggers.
