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Charlotte Awbery, the Viral Subway Singer, Sang ‘Shallow’ on ‘Ellen’—And Crushed It


“Shallow”—Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper’s Oscar-winning song from A Star Is Born—is still out here changing lives. Just last week the world became obsessed with British singer Charlotte Awbery, who went viral after she was filmed belting the song while commuting in a London subway station.

The video has been viewed more than 60 million times and even helped propel the song back into the top 40 on iTunes. She’s also racked up more than 400,000 followers on Instagram, including one Miss Ariana Grande.

Now she’s performing “Shallow” live on The Ellen DeGeneres Show—and sounding equally amazing. Awbery sat down with host Ellen DeGeneres on Wednesday, February 26, to explain what this whirlwind has been like. While some people thought the initial video must have been staged, she insists it was not. She was simply taking the tube to go meet some friends. She is, however, a professional singer who’s been doing weddings and performing in pubs and restaurants for 15 years.

“I’m absolutely overwhelmed by all of this,” she said, before revealing some advice her father gave her. “My dad always said to me, ‘Wherever you are, just sing. Never ever give up.’ And he was right.” Kevin Freshwater, who recorded the video, was also in the crowd at Ellen. He said he’d been recording people around London for two weeks when he came across Awbery. “She just blew me away,” he said. “I was just in shock.” He added, “She deserves this. I was come to tears then, watching you sing. You deserve this.”

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Of course, Ellen being Ellen, she wasn’t about to let Charlotte Awbery walk out empty-handed. She gave her guest a yearlong pass for the London tube, along with £10,000. Now can we get a trio performance set up with Gaga and Cooper?

Watch the full performance and interview in the video, above.



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Subway ‘Shallow’ Singer Goes Viral for Belting Lady Gaga With No Warning


Could you finish a famous song lyric if some random psycho ran up to you on the street with a microphone and demanded it of you? Me, like two of the people in a new viral video, would probably respond with a resounding “WTF? Get away from me.” Unless, of course, the comedian was Billy Eichner filming an episode of Billy on the Street. Call me, Billy!

I digress. On February 19, comedian Kevin Freshwater uploaded a video of himself running up to strangers and having them finish the lyrics to famous songs of his choosing. Contestant number one refused to play along, while the next unsuspecting young woman begrudgingly repeated, “It wasn’t me,” each time Freshwater hit her with another line of the Shaggy classic. After that, one man either didn’t know the lyrics to “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” or he was just not in the mood. But it was Freshwater’s last victim that turned the video into a viral sensation. Before we get into that, I have to wonder if there is something to be said about the fact that only women seemed to feel obligated to participate…. It’s almost like we are conditioned by society to accept unwanted attention from aggressive men.

Yet again, I digress. When Freshwater spots a woman on the subway with perfectly feathered blond hair, he didn’t seem to know that she was about to blow his mind. He fed her the first lyrics of Lady Gaga’s hit song “Shallow” from A Star Is Born and she ate. It. Up.

This video deserves more than 340K views, TBH. The singer in question has been identified as professional singer-songwriter Charlotte Awbery. Check her singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” if you enjoy good things:

People on Twitter are going wild. Now she has actual stan accounts, her own fandom name (Charlotte’s Web), and fans begging for an album.

“My job, from now on, is to stan and promote Charlotte Awbery’s talent. This is what I do,” @strayydog tweeted. Same, Strayydog. Same.





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The Woman Behind the First Viral Gender Reveal Is Having Second Thoughts


Back in 2008, a blogger named Jenna Karvunidis helped popularize gender reveal parties and videos when she baked a cake to celebrate the impending birth of her first child. After several miscarriages, she was ecstatic about being far along enough in her pregnancy to find out the sex of her baby and wanted to mark the occasion. But it wasn’t just any regular cake: Pink icing, revealed when the cake was cut into, let her friends and family know that a girl was on the way.

“For me, it was a milestone,” she told The Guardian on Saturday, July 27. “I had had several miscarriages. It was like, ‘Oh yay, I’m finally at a point in my pregnancy where I know if it’s a boy or a girl’ rather than ‘Let’s saddle this kid with a whole identity’. I don’t think anybody was thinking like that in 2008.”

The reveal made it onto her blog, the website The Bump interviewed her, and “then I started noticing people having the same party,” she wrote in a Facebook post on Thursday (July 25) via her blog’s account. (It’s important to note that what Karvunidis actually revealed was her baby’s sex, which indicates the biological differences between males and females, as opposed to gender, which is the social construct of norms and roles stemming from one’s sex.)

But now, Karvunidis is rethinking so-called gender reveals—thanks, in part, to the now-10-year-old daughter whose own reveal party helped catalyze the trend.

“I’ve felt a lot of mixed feelings about my random contribution to the culture. It just exploded into crazy after that. Literally—guns firing, forest fires, more emphasis on gender than has ever been necessary for a baby,” she wrote in her Facebook post. “Who cares what gender the baby is? I did at the time because we didn’t live in 2019 and didn’t know what we know now—that assigning focus on gender at birth leaves out so much of their potential and talents that have nothing to do with what’s between their legs.”

She accompanied her post with an updated family photo. “PLOT TWIST, the world’s first gender-reveal party baby is a girl who wears suits!” Karvunidis wrote.

Karvunidis told The Guardian that, as her 10-year-old has been exploring nonbinary expressions of gender, she’s also been teaching her mom a few things about all the nuances involved. “I’m letting her lead me,” Karvunidis said. “She has her opinions about there being many genders, and she is informing me about things. She was biologically born a female, and she is still ‘she’ and ‘her’ and says she’s a girl, but she is still doing things her way.”



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Bride Refuses to Hire Gay Makeup Artist — See the Viral Screenshots


“I still have more questions. How can you be a latina woman and be gay? You do know being gay is a sin correct,” the bride says, making assumptions about Cardenas’s beliefs. “I will pray for you my friend. I’m sorry that you’ve chosen a path that’s going to send you straight to hell. I think you do beautiful makeup but i just can’t have someone who’s gay being apart of my special day. The wedding is in a church and i don’t want you walking into my church.”

As if that weren’t bad enough, the bride ignorantly suggests that if Cardenas suddenly decides to stop being a lesbian, she’ll hire her, saying, “If you at any chance change your mind about being gay let me know please so i can book you.”

Kristian Cardenas

Words like this would be hurtful to anyone who doesn’t identify as straight, but they were especially painful to Cardenas, who told me she had only just recently come out. “I wanted to post [this conversation] for my friends and family because about a month and a half ago, I came out to everyone on social media. I was tired of hiding who I was. And when I had such a positive reaction to me sharing who I was I felt like everyone just needed a little taste of my reality,” she tells Allure, explaining that she’s struggled with facing acceptance in her small Texas town.

The response she’s gotten to the screenshots has been heartening — sympathy, support, love, and a new understanding. “So many friends and family or just strangers had no idea that people could actually be like this. I wanted to share to bring some light on the subject because it’s from someone they know and love,” Cardenas tells Allure. “I’ve been getting such a positive response, so much love and support, whether it be from potential clients, strangers, or someone who’s struggling with their own story. Of course, I have my fair share of awful things still being said to me. I have to brush that aside and focus on the positive.”

In fact, Cardenas tells Allure that even the bride-to-be has reached out after the conversation went viral. “She apologized, but told me it was her wedding and her choice to choose who she wanted doing makeup and hair, and that her beliefs shouldn’t have hurt my feelings,” Cardenas explains. And then, displaying the kind of tolerance Cardenas herself deserves, she says, “I understand where she’s coming from. I just wish she would have been a little nicer about it.”



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Lady Gaga Calls Bradley Cooper a ‘True Friend’ After Their Viral Oscars Performance


Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper‘s performance of “Shallow” at the 2019 Oscars currently has the Internet buzzing. It was a gorgeous rendition, yes, but people seem more interested in what’s going on between Cooper and Gaga offstage. The speculation that these two are more than friends is out of control—and problematic. As we pointed out yesterday, Gaga and Cooper were tasked with developing enough chemistry to sell A Star Is Born, so of course their performance at the Oscars had sparks. They’re actors.

Neither of them has directly addressed these rumors, but Gaga did call Cooper a “true friend” on Twitter late Monday night, February 25. “Nothing could be more special than sharing this moment at the Oscars with a true friend and artistic genius,” she wrote alongside a photo of herself and Cooper singing at the Oscars. Take a look at the message for yourself, below:

And here’s the pic she used of the performance:

Getty Images

Lady Gaga and her “Shallow” cowriters Mark Ronson, Anthony Rossomando, and Andrew Wyatt won the Oscar for Best Original Song. In her emotional speech, Gaga thanked her sister and Cooper before opening up about her own showbiz journey. “I’ve worked hard for a long time, and it’s not about winning. It’s about is not giving up. If you have a dream, fight for it. There’s a discipline for passion,” she said. “And it’s not about how many times you get rejected or you fall down or you’re beaten up. It’s about how many times you stand up and are brave and you keep on going.”

In the Oscars press room, Gaga revealed what Cooper said to her right before they hit the stage to sing “Shallow.” “One of the hardest things in life is to be brave enough to be yourself. I wish to everyone that is going to that celebration to feel a joy inside of them,” Gaga said, recalling Cooper’s words. “That’s actually what Bradley said to me yesterday, right before we did our last rehearsal for this performance of ‘Shallow,’ He said, ‘Let’s just drop a little bit of joy.’ And I said, ‘OK.’ And turns out, joy did a whole lot for me.”



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This Powerful Obit Is Going Viral Thanks to It's Brutal Honesty About Opioid Addiction


When Madelyn Linsenmeir, a 30-year-old Vermont mother died on October 7 as a result of an opioid addiction, her parents used their daughter’s obituary as a call to action for increased awareness of the disease that took their daughter’s life, while simultaneously showcasing who Linsenmeir was as a person—both because of and outside of her addiction.

Since being published earlier this week, the obit has gone viral, likely thanks to the fact that her family chronicled the start of her drug abuse, her subsequent addiction, and many attempts to overcome it. But they also honored the other attributes that defined her: the love she had for her son, her incredible singing voice, and how she charmed everyone she met.

“It is impossible to capture a person in an obituary, and especially someone whose adult life was largely defined by drug addiction. To some, Maddie was just a junkie—when they saw her addiction they stopped seeing her. And what a loss for them. Because Maddie was hilarious, and warm, and fearless, and resilient,” the obituary read.

Her parents ended the tribute by speaking directly to those who are struggling, as well as those who don’t understand their struggle: “If you yourself are struggling from addiction, know that every breath is a fresh start. Know that hundreds of thousands of families who have lost someone to this disease are praying and rooting for you. Know that we believe with all our hearts that you can and will make it. It is never too late.”

“If you are reading this with judgment, educate yourself about this disease, because that is what it is. It is not a choice or a weakness. And chances are very good that someone you know is struggling with it, and that person needs and deserves your empathy and support.”

In the wake of its publication, many have taken to Twitter to commend Linsenmeir’s family for their honest and heartbreaking portrayal of their daughter’s life, and the opioid crisis. Ivanka Trump wrote, “Profound admiration for the family members who wrote this raw, beautiful & devastating obituary. A generous act amid their pain & a wake up call to all as we battle, together as a nation, opioid addiction; a crisis of epic proportions. Rest In Peace Maddie.” Another Twitter user shared, “This is the most honest and devastating obituary you will ever read about a person who died from opioid addiction.” And another thanked Linsenmeir’s family, saying, “A beautiful, heart wrenching tribute to a woman who was a beloved daughter and mother, lost to addiction. And what a blessing this family is to educate us as they honor her.”

At least 31 women lose their lives to opioids daily, Glamour reported last year in a special look into the epidemic. And for those like Linsenmeir—who had been able to stop using for short periods of time—it typically takes repeated attempts to become drug-free. In the same report, Glamour spoke to 20 women in recovery for opioids, and almost all said that they relapsed between 10 and 20 times before getting sober. As David Fiellin, M.D., professor of medicine, emergency medicine, and public health at Yale University, put it, “Relapse rates after detox are over 80 percent within a year, and those individuals are also at high risk for overdose.”

Linsenmeir’s family’s fearless decision to publish such an honest account of their daughter’s addiction is another step in the right direction for people to understand this disease that, as of 2017, is the leading cause of death for Americans under age 50, by way of overdose.

If you or someone you know is struggling with opioids, learn more at shatterproof.org and find specific treatment options in your area on the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration‘s website.

Related Stories:

Women and Opioids: Inside the Deadliest Drug Epidemic in American History





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