“Nothing this big has ever happened to me. It’s mental.”
WHAT started as just a favour to her friend and her son has quickly turned into the biggest thing to happen in the life of IT Tralee student, Laura O’Loughlin.
“Mental” is how Laura would describe the past few weeks of her life after a music track in which she features was chosen by Adidas as the soundtrack for their new shoe advert, which stars Kylie Jenner and now has almost 5million views on YouTube.
Laura features on the track V.T.W.A by artist Steven Romeo a.k.a Lucy in Disguise, and it was all thanks to a chance meeting with the KCFE Principal Mary Lucey that all of this came about.
“About two years ago, I met Mary at a Masters Exhibition, and she asked me if I would be interested in helping her son, Ben, with a music video that he was working on with a DJ from America,” said Laura, speaking on Monday.
After completing the project, Laura asked Ben if it was worth her while contacting the DJ herself to see if there were any future collaborations that she could be involved in.
“He was about to release his album, and he asked me to send on some clips of my voice. I did this and he loved my voice, so he sent me on one of the tracks that was set to be released on the album.
“He asked me to come up with something for it,” she continued.
“I worked on the song and he sent it back to me, and he released it on his album. He soon told me that he’s never seen the number of plays on a track rise so fast.
“That was that, then, and then, about four months ago, he told me about some licensing deal that could be happening with the song, but he wouldn’t tell me what it was,” she said.
That ‘ licensing deal’ that he was referring to was, of course, the deal with Adidas – something Laura only found out when she was sent the advert starring Kylie Jenner and featuring her song.
“I was completely mind-blown,” she laughed, “It was mental. The song has gone from about 18,000 plays on Spotify to over 100,000 plays now in the last month since the ad has been out.
“I haven’t even been able to register or digest this. Nothing this large has ever happened to me,” Laura added.
Laura said that she and Steven are now working on a second song to be released as a single.