Hands up Music Man followers who have heard of Bubble Dia. I’m guessing that there aren’t too many hands up. If you have your hand up, well done! Did you discover her on TikTok where she has 5.5B views of her songs, or maybe you found her on YouTube where she has 1.05M followers? Are you Korean perhaps? Here’s the rub. This is one occasion when YouTube makes me feel like a clueless tourist fishing through a hole in snow covered ice. I’ve pulled out a big fish, but I don’t know much about it.
Despite Bubble Dia’s formidable internet presence there is little information about her on the web when searching on Google. I’m aware that search algorithms on an English-language computer might be biased against Korean results so I tried translating Bubble Dia into Korean. No luck. It turns out I was searching for Foamy Mouth! Even her well-stocked Facebook feed has little info, just loads of song videos with brief introductions. Before revealing what I have gleaned, let’s give her a listen:
That is Bubble Dia covering Bon Jovi’s Bed of Roses. As Dia kindly points out, her version is 5 keys up from the Bon Jovi classic. (Non-musicians may be wondering about the difference between key and pitch. Stack Exchange explains that while the words are often used interchangeably “pitch is simply a measurement of frequency” while “key is a musical concept describing the collection of pitches that form a framework for melody and harmony and tension/resolution.” I hope that helps :).
Any difference of opinion in the YouTube comments is whether Bubble Dia’s cover is the best cover of Bed of Roses or simply the best female cover. There is also a lot of praise for her singing. Ambikbiswas1 says: “I accidentally found her, now I come to listen to her, what a lovely voice. This is the best female cover.” Novrahadi8568 claims “Her voice is on another level. She stands tall above other Korean singers, not even Ailee can match her.” Time for Bubble Dia’s most popular YouTube video:
That is a real vocal tour de force on Steelheart’s She’s Gone. Bubble Dia really leans into that performance! The video has 64M views in four years.
So what have I found out about Bubble Dia? Well, her 5.5B TikTok views all come from other people posting her videos – she doesn’t have a Bubble Dia TikTok account. Also, if you dig around on her YouTube channel, you’ll discover that she has two YouTube channels, one for K-pop covers of Western rock and ballads and one for Korean language K-pop covers. The Korean channel has 164M subscribers, and the most popular video has 16M views.
The rest of this info came up on a Google search for Bubble Dia’s age, but I haven’t been able to verify it. Instead of a reference, Google invites you to “claim this knowledge panel”. So here goes. Born on 29 March 1988, she is 35 years old. Her real name is Ahn Sul-ki, she studied at Boston Conservatory at Berklee, she is 1.6M tall, and has one album, Bed Of Roses.
Hands up anyone who wants to hear Bubble Dia’s most popular Korean K-pop song. Thanks for your special support. Here we go:
If you would like to see more from Bubble Dia, you can subscribe to her YouTube channel or follow her on Facebook or Instagram.