Brooklynne Webb
IS The Internet
THE BREAKDOWN with Bailey Meyers
Brooklynne Webb is TikTok’s favorite princess, and she just dropped an album. Donning a tiara in POV-style videos, @xobrooklynne shot into stardom in just a couple of short COVID months. We spoke to Brooklynne about her new single, rise to fame, body positivity, attitude, and of course life as a teen with an audience of over 10 million followers on TikTok.
Brooklynne is known for carrying a “dgaf” attitude towards her haters. This is reflected in her recent single, “My Crown,” in which the TikTok star lays out flat, “POV you're trying really hard to get me canceled,” rebuking the hate before it comes. And the hate certainly did come, spurred to new heights by a couple of acapella covers of “My Crown” posted to Brooklynne’s TikTok feed. After a full week of posts promoting the poppy, undeniably catchy, and mass-produced-feeling single to many less-than-nice comments left by the haters themselves, Brooklynne finally gave them a full album, My Crown: The Album.
The album includes 14 tracks, all of which are modeled off of the single in different styles. There’s an intense EDM-inspired version, “Dance my heart away,” a spanish version, “Mi Corona,” a rap version, “Freestyling to My Crown”, and a show tune version, “I Wanna Be On Broadway. Can’t forget about “Screaming on the Inside” either, which remixes the song with heavy metal with guttural vocals and wailing guitars. With the album’s eclectic tracks, especially “Trying New Things,” which features an off-key recorder blaring over the original version, it's not crazy to wonder if the TikTok star has been trolling this whole time. Aaaaand…Surprise! she is. She got me too. If you want to be sure, just check out the website that she promotes in the intro track of the album: mycrown.xyz. If you still need to be convinced, I don’t know what to tell you.
The entire production was a work of Brooklynne’s genius and is layered beyond belief, including all of the right indignantly positive duets and comments to prompt hate for the album and Brooklynne’s singing before its release on Friday. When critics were ready to pounce on her opus, she let them know she was in on the joke. Her album said, through its mishmash of styles, “I’m doing this for fun. I don’t care what you think. Thanks for the followers.” And, POV for those commenters, they were trying to get her canceled. Brooklynne flipped the script back on her trolls. The whole album showed that there is more to XoBrooklynne than her TikTok feed and sunny personality. She’s also a pro at marketing.
Brooklynne is now able to play both sides. She’s laughing along with the haters at her album, and the more people that see it the more streams she gets as an artist, raking in followers and revenue from both camps.
When we spoke to her about her new direction branching out into music before the album’s release, XoBrooklynne told us, “It’s something I’ve always been super passionate about, and then with social media it just made sense…so I thought, ‘why not?’” Before COVID and TikTok fame, Brooklynne was involved with musical theater and dance, so she has musical roots, but that “with social media it just made sense” line hits harder now that the album is out. Clearly, Brooklynne is a TikToker before she’s a singer, but I have no doubts that “My Crown”--or at least one version of it—will go viral as a sound on the app.
This isn’t her first time clapping back at her haters either. When we asked her about the hate she receives, Brooklynne said, “It’s definitely been hard for me a few times, especially at the start, but the more that I’ve been doing it, the more that I’ve realized that it’s usually just people that are bored at home that just have nothing better to do than try to tear someone else down or worry about what someone else is doing instead of putting that energy and effort into something more positive.” She’s a seasoned veteran at this, and often pivots off of the hate she receives by strategically duetting the videos with “Thanks for using my sound!” As they say, all press is good press.
But the album truly has some bangers too. Although she shows her audience who’s boss with several tracks, My Crown, The Album, still slaps in its own unique way. The songs were professionally made with a team, so the production quality is high. Take “Dance My Heart Out,” which could be played at an EDM festival (albeit to some resistance, for sure) or “Freestyling to My Crown,” which includes a plethora of rappers supporting Brooklynne on vocals. They’re not bad either. “Everybody Wants a Piece,” the final track, dips into experimental hyperpop territory too, and due to the irony of the whole situation it’s a perfect genre to step into, with lyrics like, “You’re clowns” and, “Every time that you guys hated on her and clicked on her song
It just made her more money.” Time will tell which tracks will blow up, but the potential is there despite the satire.
Besides the excitement of her single and album, Brooklynne has been living it up as a 17-year-old influencer living alone in LA. On making it to LA, Brooklynne said, “Making it to LA has opened up a lot of opportunities and has really made me realize that I can make anything I want happen in life if I put the right amount of work and dedication into it.” That’s certainly visible with the album, but even more than this, Brooklynne has meticulously molded her persona and secured brand deals, collabs with TikTok’s finest, and has promoted positive messages of body positivity. Yet, she’s still 17. We asked her about it, and she had this to say, proving she’s no less human than the rest of us: “I mean, I definitely don’t feel like a teenager, I feel like an adult. Especially because I’m living in another country alone at 17 you have to take on adult responsibilities, even things as simple as doing your laundry or remembering to clean up the dishes. No one’s going to tell you to, you really need to do it on your own. No one’s going to tell you to book your dentist appointments, you really have to be able to wake yourself up in the morning. There’s a lot of different things that you don't think about that are just so different.”
The star did not wake up with 10 million followers. She told us that she had been creating content on TikTok for two years—amassing a following of 50k—when COVID hit and she started posting upwards of 7 videos a day. During the first month of creating consistent content, Brooklynnne hit 1 million, and it has only been up from there. Brooklynne said, “It was honestly insane. It was super cool…I would wake up every morning and immediately check my social media and then get busy and just film until sundown and go to bed. That was my life for months and months and months.” As for the crown, it was one dollar from Claire’s, and it gave Brooklynne the recognizable character that propelled her to heights that would make Rapunzel dizzy.
On her choice of platform, Brooklynne was adamant about TikTok for its potential for originality: “I like the short-form content because I’ll come up with one small fun idea, whereas with youtube I struggle with the more long-form videos… It’s fun to create the short form because it's not as impersonal as Instagram where you’re just snapping a photo; I actually get to put myself out there and be a bit more creative.”
Now, Brooklynne is no longer filming in her childhood bedroom, but she still has the full-time job of an influencer. She said, “it’s definitely still a job, and it’s hard because the job is 24/7… especially if you’re in LA, going to events and stuff, it really does carry throughout your entire day and unless you specifically designate time to take off, it's always right there.” Many videos are also a huge production, so it’s easy to understand why she’d be busy: “If I’m doing a full look and everything and getting ready, usually getting ready takes about 2-3 hours and actually filming the video can take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour/hour and a half. Then the editing after can also take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour to several hours for him as well depending on the video.” Brooklynne shouted out her roommate, @coopfilmz on TikTok, “an amazing videographer and photographer,” who often helps her shoot and edit high-quality videos.
Brooklynne’s videos, which often feature her signature princess POVs, makeup, and messages of body positivity, are a reflection of the person she is. In her childhood, Brooklynne admitted that “every morning before school, I would spend about an hour just watching beauty gurus while I did my makeup for school and middle school, and I kept practicing and having fun with it, and it’s one of my favorite things to do!” Practice makes perfect, and now Brooklynne has joined the beauty gurus’ ranks.
But she uses her fame for good, too. It’s not just makeup and a tiara that makes Brooklynne a star; it’s her heart as well. She stands up for girls and preaches positivity, flaunting her bare belly to show what real women look like and exposing the lies of social media. Speaking on body positivity, Brooklynne told us, “It was always something growing up that I’ve been conscious of and really felt passionate about, so as soon as I started to have a platform it was something that I really wanted to spread and share and make an impact with. So as I just kept going and kept growing, I kept creating content whenever I had something to say.” Brooklynne represents a generation of young creators focused on uplifting their online communities.
Photo Credit: @coopfilms
As an internet celebrity, it may be easy to peg Brooklynne Webb as an eternally-online influencer. But when we asked her about her dream day, the phone was nowhere in sight. “Probably one of my favorite things to do is wake up and get to go to Six Flags with a few friends and just have a day of fun where we’re not on our phones at all and just getting to ride rides, and it’s like I’m a kid again!” I can’t argue with Six Flags, and Brooklynne also pressed her point with, “It’s definitely important to unplug. It’s not healthy to be on the phone 24/7.” Such wise words from TikTok’s princess.
As Brooklynne Webb closes out the year with an album to remember, for better or for worse, she reflected on what the coming year has in store for her as well. Brooklynne’s only 17, but she’s already dipped into music, fashion, makeup, activism, and of course TikTok circles. She told us, “this year is going to have a lot of self-discovery. There’s a lot of things that I enjoy doing and that I’m passionate about and I just want to do it all but I think I need to narrow down a bit more and figure out what is truly the most important.” With such a strong following and an incredible drive, we can’t wait to see where XoBrooklynne goes next in her journey to find herself.