Did We Fall in Love With the Music… or the Story?
A Scroll Stopper Club investigation into growing up on YouTube.
The first video was uploaded to YouTube sixteen years ago.
A seven-year-old girl sitting behind a drum kit, playing a Hannah Montana song.
From that moment on, the internet watched three sisters learn to play music, perform, write songs, record albums, and tour the world. Millions of people literally watched them grow up.
Today, The Warning has over a million subscribers on YouTube and one of the most devoted fanbases in rock.
You would think I would have been one of the people watching that journey.
I wasn’t.
I didn’t even know who The Warning were until I released my recent Scroll Stopper Club episode on Ellen Alaverdyan, the child bass prodigy many of us have also watched grow up on YouTube.
The video has done incredibly well, and my comment section filled up with people saying the same thing:
“You need to check out The Warning.”
So I did.
And here is where I may lose some of you.
I think The Warning’s music is boring.
Exhibit A ⬆
My Ellen Alaverdyan investigation unexpectedly turned into an investigation of The Warning.
The songs don’t move me emotionally. The recordings feel overproduced. I’ve heard bands make this kind of music before, and I don’t hear anything that makes me stop what I’m doing and think, Wait… what was that?
That doesn’t mean they’re bad musicians.
They’re obviously talented.
It means something different.
It means they didn’t stop my scroll.
Which immediately made me ask another question.
If we had never watched these sisters grow up online—if they released this exact music today with no sixteen-year YouTube history behind it—would they be as popular?
I honestly don’t think so.
And I don’t mean that as an insult.
I think it’s one of the most fascinating things the internet has ever created.
People didn’t simply discover a band.
They watched children become adults.
They celebrated birthdays, milestones, victories, disappointments, and everything in between. Somewhere along the way, the audience stopped following the music and started following the people.
It became less like discovering a new band…
…and more like watching the latest season of a television show you’ve been invested in for years.
That’s powerful.
It’s also incredibly rare.
It’s a good gig if you can get it.
Imagine building an audience before you’ve made your defining artistic statement. By the time your albums arrive, millions of people already care about what happens next.
That’s exactly what I saw happening in my comment section.
People weren’t just recommending songs.
They were introducing me to people they felt like they knew.
The reason why Ellen ended up in Scroll Stopper Club and The Warning didn’t was not because Ellen grew up on YouTube, but because 13 Town stopped my scroll.
If Ellen had released a song that didn’t move me, she wouldn’t have been inducted either.
Scroll Stopper Club has never been about biographies.
It has never been about fanbases.
It has never been about technical ability.
It’s about one thing.
A song.
One moment.
One question I can’t stop thinking about.
Now, could The Warning eventually end up in the club?
Absolutely.
Artists change.
Sometimes dramatically.
They’re still young, and I hope they continue taking risks. Maybe one day they’ll release a song that completely blindsides me.
I would love that.
Because this isn’t about defending my opinion.
It’s about following my curiosity wherever it leads.
They may be wonderful people.
I have no reason to think otherwise.
And this isn’t a judgment of who they are.
I don’t know them.
Many of their fans feel like they do, and that’s exactly what makes this phenomenon so interesting.
YouTube didn’t just give us another way to discover music.
It gave us a way to grow up alongside the people making it.
Sometimes that relationship becomes part of the art itself.
Whether that’s a good thing or not…
…I’m still investigating.
So now I’m curious.
Is there an artist you love partly because you’ve watched their journey?
Or…
Do you think the music should always stand on its own?
I’d love to hear where you land.