The duo is made up of Amy Heidemann and Nick Noonan, who met while studying at Boston’s Berklee College of Music. Shortly after graduating in 2008 they started making music together, creating covers of songs like LMFAO’s “Party Rock Anthem” and Nicki Minaj’s “Super Bass” before putting them on YouTube. 200 million views later, the band signed a major label deal with Epic Records and began work on their debut release with the label, “Hello”. 2012 saw the release of their biggest charting hit to date “Heartbroken”, which was a top 20 hit single on the Billboard Hot 100. Spurred on by the single’s success, the band confirmed via Twitter that they were working on their debut studio album and that they would also be heading out on their first headline tour over the winter months.
However, the album wouldn’t surface until 2014, during which time the band performed live both at concerts and on TV shows, including the 2012/13 edition of Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve. “Pulses” was released in March 2014, and ever since then, the band has continued to give the sobriquet “internet sensations” a good name. With collaborations with Big Time Rush and George Watsky under their belts, and a second album to be released in 2015, the world is at their feet. For that, they come highly recommended.
Like many others, my first introduction to Karmin was through their YouTube channel – specifically, for me, it was their cover of Chris Brown’s Look at Me Now. It’s amazing how much they’ve grown and how far they’ve come, having secured a record deal, and I was excited to see them when they came to House of Blues in San Diego, California earlier this year.
The venue’s pretty small and intimate, which was really cool because it let us get close to this group that we all kind of watched grow up on YouTube and make it big right in front of our eyes. As to be expected, the set was mainly their new original material, but they still performed some of their famous covers (the crowd definitely enjoyed when Look at Me Now played).
The covers were what you’d expect from their YouTube videos, but the originals were surprisingly good. This band’s come a long way, and they’re going to keep getting better in the future. I’d highly recommend that everybody check out their YouTube channel and go see them in person if you like what you hear. They’re every bit as good in person as they are in their videos.