Taken from this week’s Future Pop mailer. Click here to subscribe.
When Molly Kate Kestner was 18, she posted a low quality iPhone video of a song she’d written, called His Daughter, on Facebook. The post was quickly shared 50,000 times, and she uploaded it to YouTube, where it now has 15 million views. It also reached no.43 on the US iTunes chart and no.52 in the UK. She was invited to perform on Good Morning America and flown from her home state of Minnesota to LA to meet labels, publishers and agents. She eventually signed to Mike Caren’s successful APG label, an imprint of Atlantic, and has been working on new music with songwriters and producers including Toby Gad, Autumn Rowe and Adam Argyle. Now aged 21 and recently married, she just released her first official single, Good Die Young, co-written by Emily Warren (featured on Capsize by Frenship, wrote Nobody Like You for Little Mix) and Nick Ruth (Zara Larsson, Carly Rae Jepson). His Daughter had a very heavy Christian message, suggesting that faith in God is the answer to issues such as domestic abuse and teenage pregnancy, and it seemed she would become a Christian pop artist. However, Molly didn’t want to put herself in that box, and has said she takes inspiration from singer-songwriters like Sara Bareilles. Good Die Young still has a Christian theme, but definitely feels more mainstream, and she looks like a polished, stylish (though still very clean cut) pop star in the new video.