I almost can't believe we haven't done a write-up on Lindsey Stirling before, for a team that is as fond of Pentatonix as we are. Lindsey Stirling's story is not dissimilar: she cracked how YouTube worked really early and leveraged the virality of her videos to sell tickets.
That's pretty much it, but keep reading for the details.
She even released a song with Penatonix six years ago, a cover of Imagine Dragon's Radioactive that has over 180 million views. Penatonix, for those who need to be brought up to speed is a very successful a cappella group that mainly does covers of pop songs. They've released numerous albums, and their Christmas albums do especially well on the charts. They also tour the world, and are actually on tour now.
See more about our coverage on Pentatonix and get ticket information here >>
But let's get to Lindsey Stirling. She's the violinist who is seen also dancing in the video; and that's kinda what she does. It's a bit like you'd ask a 4-year-old what she'd want to be when she grows up and she starts listing violinist-dancer-youtuber-famous! but then it'd magically materialise and you'd get... Lindsey Stirling.
She's huge. She's been on YouTube since 2007, that's 13 years, and is approaching 3 billion views on her channel. She has 1.6 million followers on Instagram. She's known for doing covers (personally I love-love-love her cover of 7 Years by Lukas Graham which is included on my autumn perfection playlist, Pumpkin Spice Latte).
Her visuals are both cinematic and theatrical with her love of cosplay (dressing up as characters) and filming her videos outside makes for simply such a stellar viewing experience there's no wonder her subscriber numbers are in the millions (12.3 million to be exact).
Her musical production is not really classical even though the violin might make you think that. She chooses modern songs to cover but even when she doesn't there are often electronic production element that make it sound EDM-like even veering into dubstep territory. That sounds like it could easily go wrong, and for someone else it might not work at all, but she knows how to bring these elements together that make for a wonderful listen (her numbers on Spotify are no less impressive even though she's very much a YouTube-first kind of artist with 2.2 monthly listeners on the platform).
If it sounds gimmicky to you, it's not. Hans Zimmer has worked with her on the Main Theme from The Dark Knight Rises, yes the Batman movie score. The music world seems to embrace her artistic vision as well and she's collaborated with many big artists, like Elle King, Sabrina Carpenter and even John Legend.
Honestly, try watching that video of her with John Legend and see how long you can go without getting goosebumps. I personally didn't make it 15 seconds till I got some on my arms and before we hit the minute mark it was all over.
She got some magic about her of making the classical feel current and her energy is just so infectious even if "you're not really into violins or whatever" something about her makes you keep watching.
Her start in the early YouTube era is clear because she definitely appeals to cultural references that were popular at the time, the geekiness of Lord of the Rings (there's a medley for that), the emo vibe of something like Green Day or Evanescence (both covered, worth looking up!), and there's a sense of humour and joy to the choice of costumes and the performance in the videos (see her dueting with her own shadow on an original).
Her visuals are always excellent, strongly favouring filming outside, and having choreography that even when the covers don't have vocals (Penatonix and John Legend were the exceptions. Understandably, who wouldn't make exceptions for those two) entertaining enough to keep the attention of a mainstream audience, and frankly a delight to watch.
Everything she does has a slight-ethereal vibe to it. Having been like a magic fairy of the interwebs, her spell is no less captivating IRL (as they say referring to the physical world, the place where concerts happen).
She seems to have had a knack for bringing people through the door from the very beginning because even when she started doing live shows in 2012 and 2013 she'd be headlining shows for a 1000 people around the country. For those who are maybe not so up to date an all the music things, that's actually quite hard and takes many artists a long time to build up that kind of audience if they ever even get to that level.
But having a huge online audience is not something everyone has, but she does and clearly in a way she knows how to mobilise to come to a show. By 2017 she's touring internationally headlining venues like Germany's iconic Zenith in Munchen and Palacio de Los Deportes in Mexico City.
Her 2020 tour is just about to go on sale and is expected to sell out across the nation.
Lindsey Stirling's Tour will visit some of its biggest venues in the United States. This incredible artist has been putting her head down and working hard for the best part of a decade and her live shows are a true reflection of that.
It's in many ways remarkable to think an instrumentalist has this level of success. Every other artist that we can think of on this scale is a singer or at least in a band. She literally plays the violin, not known for ranking high on the rock-star street-cred scale, and dances. Many of her songs have no vocals, but she's still reached the height of selling tens of thousands of tickets per show.
And when you see what her performance looks like live, you wonder why you haven't seen her show already.
As someone who is not a violinist, I would not have guessed it's possible to play such a technical instrument to the quality that she does while moving around this much!! It just seems like it shouldn't work. But it does. She's dressed like the internet voted on her outfit, perfected with a colourful tail and sets of eyes under bushy eyebrows on her torso but the performance is jaw-dropping.
And don't just take my word for it, watch the crowd cheer her on like the rockstar that she obviously is. If you're lucky enough to have Lindsey Stirling come through your city, it's worth seeing if you can get tickets, even if this is the first time you're hearing about her.
