Careers Propelled by Tweets: The Cases of King Princess and Carly Rae Jepsen

Urban Klancnik

Jan 22, 2020

According to our data, women musicians rule Twitter according to the number of followers. There are only two male artists among the top 10 musicians by Twitter fandom, two Justins actually – Bieber and Timberlake. Katy Perry has the most followers (108.3M at the time of publishing), followed by Rihanna, Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, and Ariana Grande. It's no surprise that English is the dominant language on the channel, as 68 of the top 100 musicians on Twitter come from English-speaking countries. There are 20 % of musicians among the top 100 who come from countries where Spanish or Portuguese is the official language, and even they generally tweet in English.

Twitter offers a great way to send short messages about new releases, news and links, tour dates, and so on. Now, it’s hard to claim that any musician became famous exclusively because of their posts on Twitter, but there are a few whose careers soared thanks to tweets.

King Princess learned it’s important who supports you
King Princess is a great example of what can happen when a famous person tweets about you. In February 2018, she released her debut single “1950”, a tribute to the LGBT community. The song exploded when Harry Styles tweeted lyrics from the song on his channel. Although she had already had support from the LGBT community, people all over the world started to notice her after that. Harry’s message was short, with no additional information, but it was enough to launch her career. 

Another smart move for King Princess

At the beginning of her career, King Princess had been asked by Harry to open for him at Madison Square Garden, but she had refused. She later confessed that she didn’t feel ready and that she needed time. In short, she understood that a bad performance at Madison Square Garden could ruin her career. But now she’s ready, and she'll open for Harry on his tour in 2020. Refusing the first offer was probably a good move on her part, though chances like this usually come only once in a lifetime, so if you don’t take it, you might regret it later. For her, it worked great. 

You could say that Harry launched her career, but in the end, it was the songs that resonated. If people didn’t like them, no post from Harry could help her. He just introduced her to a larger audience. 

Justin Bieber launching Carly Rae Jepsen’s career 

Carly has a similar story to King Princess. She released her song “Call Me Maybe” in September 2011, and for the first few months, nothing happened. Then Justin Bieber found the song, did a lip-sync video, and tweeted about it. He started a trend, and soon all the biggest stars were doing it. It’s a known fact that everything Justin Bieber touches becomes a huge success, and Carly was no different. Justin’s manager Scooter Brown saw her potential and signed her on. 

In the last two years, Carly has been slipping a little on Twitter. She's lost almost 1M followers since January 2018, which is not a big surprise, as her last tweet at the time of publishing had been posted in May 2019. Still, she has over 10M followers left.

Twitter feels a bit underestimated among musicians, but it's a powerful tool for promotion, and it offers the means to repay your fans with insight into your work and personal life. And it also feels like that there are still hidden treats, unknown ideas, and undiscovered territories within the channel that someday, someone will discover and create another music revolution. 

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Cover photo: King Princess by Charles Reagan Hackleman/Lollapalooza

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