Medway’s Venbee explains the moment she ‘went viral’ and why staying grounded is the best policy

Don’t be fooled by the TikToks she’s got – Venbee’s still Erin from the block. Or in this case, Chatham. The 21-year-old singer-songwriter explains why going viral won’t stop her being unapologetically herself.

It’s March 2022. Venbee (@venbee.music) finishes her lunch and decides to film a quick TikTok. She doesn’t know it yet, but this 15-second video is about to go viral…

“I was outside having a packet of Skips and a sandwich,” she says, immediately likeable. “Skips are so underrated. I was in my mum’s garden and I filmed myself sitting there in a bucket hat, and it just went viral! I don’t understand why, but it did, and it’s changed my life.”

Venbee’s (real name Erin – her artist name inspired by changing some of the letters in her middle name) quick ascent to viraldom is thanks to her slinky track Low Down (with Dan Fable) – a dark pop song tackling the subject of depression, masked by mellow, stripped-back liquid drum & bass. Radio 1 made the song its Introducing: Track of The Week, while at the time of writing it has racked up more than 14 million Spotify streams.

To say she’s staggered is an understatement; she genuinely can’t believe this is happening. She admits that the TikTok was so throwaway, the song wasn’t even finished at the time – leaving her scrambling to complete the track for release.

“It was literally a complete accident,” she nods. “I was getting two likes on my TikToks then, so I was past the point of caring whether it went viral or not. I’d had a few viral moments beforehand of just me being a tw*t, but no one ever really cared about my music. So I was like ‘OK, I’ll just post this, willy-nilly’, and that was that! It’s very much a whirlwind. My life has been turned upside down very quickly.”

She distinctly remembers the moment she realised that something was different about this video: “It was up for about half an hour and it had about 3,000 likes, and I was well gassed,” she recalls. “I go to bed and then I wake up and it’s viral. I was like ‘Right, now I actually need to get this song finished’ because everyone thought the song was done and that I was just holding back on releasing it, but I genuinely did not have the song finished. It was the most stressful week of my life,” she laughs.

A Chatham girl through and through, she acknowledges the town is a little “rough around the edges”, but there’s nowhere she’d rather be.

“I’m very much born and bred a Chatham girl,” she confirms, grinning. “People have a heart of gold here – it’s homely, if that makes sense? Look…” she pauses, searching for some diplomatic words, “there’s gonna be some people in every city that aren’t great, but most of the people here are so lovely. I don’t see myself moving for a while.”

You can’t help but like Venbee. She’s recently been working with the likes of Tom Walker, yet she’s as far from pretentious as you can get: her Instagram is all bucket hats, oversized tracksuits and toilet selfies. Plus, what’s not to like about a woman who wears a chicken-nugget necklace?

“For me, it’s that I don’t want anyone to look at my photos and go ‘This girl has the perfect life’. A lot of my life is fantastic, but it’s not all peaches and cream. My goal is to keep growing and be as successful as I possibly can, so I deliberately post photos where I look like rubbish just in case anyone catches me on a bad day when I’m outside and they go ‘Oh, that’s just Erin’. So there’s no expectation for me to look a certain way. It’s not only for other people’s confidence, it’s for mine as well.”

Circling back to her Spotify success – some 14 million listens of her debut track, while being relatively unknown, is no small achievement. It hasn’t quite sunk in yet.

“It’s crazy,” she says, shaking her head. “I popped a bottle of Prosecco and wrote ‘10 million’ on the cork when that milestone happened. It’s quite daunting that that amount of people have listened to my song because I’m opening up a little part of my brain that I kept away for quite a bit of time. The chorus is so upbeat, but the verses are really raw.”

She’s heading into the studio straight after this interview and promises more music is coming soon, including a debut EP due out later in the year.

“Hopefully my next song that comes out does as well. I know it’s hard to follow up on a viral moment, but I’m hoping people will stick with me for the next one,” she says, immediately pointing out that she’s in it for much more than fleeting viral moments.

“I’m not here for a hype moment,” she says, suddenly serious.

“I want longevity in a career… so I never have to work part-time again. That’s all I want,” she laughs wickedly.