By Kyle Wright
Photographs by Clay Patrick McBride

There are 48 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute. On a platform so filled with fame-seekers desperate to go viral, it’s hard to distinguish crap from quality, the talented from the Tosh.0. The folks who get famous are often best remembered for the sonic thud they make after falling from the heights (sometimes landing on a coffee table). Notoriety is fleeting. But in the post-Bieber music industry, searching YouTube is now the standard for finding the next big thing.

This time last year, singer Amy Heidemann was trying to make ends meet by belting out standards like “Single Ladies” and “Into the Groove” with a wedding band called Kahootz. Her boyfriend, Nick Noonan, a trombone major she met at Berklee College of Music, worked at the Ring Boxing Club on Comm. Ave. In their spare time they were Karmin (a mash-up of “karma” and the Latin word for song), a fledging duo that had only just started to upload quirky pop covers to YouTube. Under the advisement of their friend Nils Gums, a fellow alum whose Raw Session YouTube channel helped other artists establish a presence on the Web, they stuck to a strict schedule of two covers per week, plus one original song. “One of the most important things is being extremely active with your audience,” says Gums. “You never know what’s going to hit.”

For Karmin, that hit was their cover of Chris Brown’s “Look at Me Now.” Posted in April, Heidemann’s quickfire rip through the rap sensation landed on RyanSeacrest.com, pulling in millions of viewers. “I never thought I’d rap publicly,” the 25-year-old laughs. Heidemann wasn’t allowed to listen to hip-hop growing up in a conservative home in Nebraska, so she discovered the talent accidentally. “I would just do it for fun, but I really could do it. It’s something I’m serious about.”

Just over a week later, they were performing on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. “We fantasized about this for a long time, and then it happened so much faster than we anticipated,” she says. Noonan adds, “I knew we had something special, but we couldn’t have predicted this.” Headier success followed almost immediately when, in May, the NBA selected “Take It Away,” an original song, as the theme for the Finals.

Their rise caught the eye of major label legend L.A. Reid, judge of The X Factor and producer for acts like Mariah Carey, Kanye West and Rihanna. Seeing the potential in their original content, he engineered a deal that would bring the duo to Epic Records. “I couldn’t believe that he was on the phone, that it was happening,” Heidemann remembers. “I called Nick and he came rushing home and I ran outside crying. We rolled around in the middle of Beacon Street.”

“He just kept saying that he was hungry for something new,” Noonan says. “No one really knew what our sound was, but he saw something in us.” Reid has taken a hands-on role, which is encouraging for the first-time recording artists. “He has something to prove,” says Gums, who now manages the band in Los Angeles. “He’s very invested in their success.”

Karmin’s story is a Web-enabled fairy-tale-come-true, but transitioning from YouTube stardom to Top 40 phenom raises another challenge. How does a band best-known for covers (their personal favorites include Lil Wayne’s “6 Foot 7 Foot” and Nicki Minaj’s “Super Bass”) establish an original identity without confusing fans? Part of Karmin’s appeal was the spin they gave each rehashed song. “We call it Karmin-izing,” says Noonan. They pared down arrangements so that they featured little more than vocals, a keyboard, Heidemann on acoustic guitar and Noonan on cajón or trombone. “People recognized our sound, and it was unique.”

The key idea was to avoid karaoke-style kitsch. A similar formula worked for 14-year-old Greyson Chance, whose piano-heavy rendition of Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi” went viral in 2010, leading to an album on the record label Eleveneleven, Ellen DeGeneres’ imprint on Interscope. DeGeneres has filled her label with young talent cut from Karmin’s cloth, most recently adding Berklee students Charlie Puth and Emily Luther to the roster. Having never performed together before, they recorded a cover of Adele’s “Someone Like You” as an entry into a Perez Hilton singing competition. Puth, 19, meticulously reworked the ballad to incorporate intricate harmonies suggestive of country music. It won the competition and has since been viewed by more than 3.7 million people. “What YouTube does is make music accessible,” he says. “It’s flipped the industry and united content creators and people. For the first time, people are deciding what’s popular.”

But what’s a popular free viewing on YouTube may not translate to actual sales. Karmin’s hoping to repeat their viral success with their debut professional single, “Crash Your Party.” It’s an exuberant, radio-friendly track reminiscent of P!nk’s earlier work (when she, too, was under the tutelage of Reid). Produced by hip-hop heavyweights the Runners and sampling Black Sheep’s classic “The Choice Is Yours (Revisited),” it’s a quintessential piece of the genre the duo calls “swag-pop”—a free-spirited pop-R&B hybrid they’re helping to define. “It felt like a great introduction for people who may not have heard us before,” Heidemann says.

The other songs on the album, due for a February 2012 release, mix what’s known with what’s new. With a blazing rap and pop hook, “I Told You So” pays homage to the Chris Brown hit that launched Karmin’s career. Other tracks are less flippant, like “Brokenhearted,” which gets a jolt of angst from Katy Perry hit-maker Dr. Luke.

Pop music is, of course, a serious business. Noonan and Heidemann know that the pressure to succeed might carry a personal cost. Having dated for six years, they got engaged last December, but they’ve already had to postpone their wedding. “We were booked for some final recording sessions that day,” Heidemann says. “There’s just so much going on right now. We’ll get there.” Noonan also thinks they’ll elude the stereotypical pop-star relationship dangers. “I just feel lucky to be able to experience this with Amy.” Perhaps that’s because they’re comfortable in their very different roles. Noonan is happy playing the goofy hipster to Heidemann’s suicide-roll-sporting pinup. She likes to scour vintage stores and create YouTube hair tutorials. “I just get a haircut,” Noonan quips.

Despite their evident pleasure in having made it this far, 150 million hits doesn’t ensure a Bieber-esque future. Take the cautionary example of Rebecca Black, a viral sensation now relegated to cultural infamy as a cruel, mostly forgotten joke. Of course, Gums thinks they can weather the transition. They have personality. They have skills. Plus, he adds, “Nick and Amy are real musicians.”

Real musicians whose reputation is built on others’ songwriting. Recognizing this, there have been talks of including one or two covers as album bonus tracks. “We’d never abandon them completely,” Noonan says. “They’re fun and they get people excited.” Their most recent YouTube cover is a throwback to TLC’s “No Scrubs,” and has currently clocked more than a million hits. But now the focus is on the original, with work beginning on a music video to accompany their first single. “We aren’t completely sure of the concept yet,” says Heidemann, “but we want to tie in our past somehow.”

One idea is to open the scene in their shabby, old living room, then pan away to reveal Karmin’s glitzier, current lifestyle. And there’s no doubt the first place you’ll find it is YouTube.

 

Hair styling: Katsumi Matsuo for Redken; makeup: Asami Taguchi at L’Atelier NYC; wardobe styling: Kelly Brown. On Heidemann: scarf and pants by ISSA, necklace worn as belt by Tuleste, tank is Noonan’s. On Noonan: shirt by Ben Sherman, pants by Carlos Campos, watch is Noonan’s own.

Photo Credit for Karmin at iHeartRadio Music Festival: Ethan Miller