Ed Sheeran’s Shape of You was one of the most streamed and downloaded songs of 2021. Now a cover by South Korean singer J.Fla has gone viral on YouTube, with more than 334.6 million views!
J Fla was born Kim Jung Hwa on June 10th 1987, in Seoul, South Korea. Not much is known about her early life, but she started her YouTube channel in 2011. Her first song was a cover of Beyoncé’s Halo, which has now been viewed a more modest 6.2 million times, but it’s very impressive for a first video.
Many very popular YouTubers with hundreds of thousands of subscribers have less than 100,000 views for early videos. J.Fla’s channel is immensely popular around the world. In 2018, she became the first independent South Korean YouTuber to have more than 10 million subscribers to her channel. This is an incredible achievement, but she hasn’t stopped there; her subscriptions have swelled to 17.6 million. Almost doubling your fan base in 4 years is mind-boggling.
Following her initial video, J Fla continued to upload new performances, reaching a total of sixteen videos in five months. Just eighteen months after she started her channel, J.Fla released her first album, Babo Kateun Story.
J.Fla did not become an instant superstar. Instead, she continued to work on her music, uploading songs to her YouTube channel and making more albums and EPs. She released 5 EPs in the next four years before releasing her first full-length album in March 2017.
J.Fla’s covers are always exceptional and a true tribute to the original artists. In addition to Ed Sheeran and Beyonce, she has covered songs by the legendary Swedish supergroup ABBA, Queen, Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande. Her covers have filled another three albums, named Rose, Believer and Natural. They are available on iTunes and Spotify, and J.Fla’s Spotify page gets 145,000 moistens per month. It’s safe to say her popularity continues to grow.
There is a twist, though. It seems that J.Fla is not content to be solely a cover artist. Since 2019, she has been recording original songs with full music videos for her channel. In 2022 she took her creative efforts one step further and founded her own record company.
It is based in her home, South Korea and is called Goodsen Entertainment. J.Fla announced her debut album of original songs in October, but the release date is not known. However, her first single, Bedroom Singer is available for download. It has had 148,000 listens on Spotify and 3.4 million views on her YouTube channel.
If you’ve never listened to J.Fla’s songs before, now is a great time to start. Her cover of Shape Of You stays faithful to the original, but the light, breathy quality of her voice adds a whole new element that makes you feel you’re hearing it for the first time. Then, if you love her voice (and who wouldn’t), check out Bedroom Singer too. You won’t be disappointed.
If you would like to see more from J.Fla, you can subscribe to their YouTube channel or follow her on Facebook or Instagram.