“Girl, we have been the busiest we have ever been,“ she tells me on the phone, hopping in the car as, Adam, her manager, packs everything up to go to her next showcase at SXSW. Her name is Noelle Bean and her only purpose of posting videos to YouTube was to showcase her guitar skills to family and friends via the Internet. “I would put the iPhone –no, no –it wasn’t even an iPhone, it was an iPod touch,” she says, “I would set it up, literally, I kid you not, I would take stacks of books so it got me in the video.” I think a lot of YouTubers out there can agree that stacking books and leaning iPod touches was the norm thing. Am I right?
Bean then begins to tell us the story of how she got her first acoustic guitar, “this lady came up to the school I was attending and she went to the front office where my Mom was the registrar and she’s like I have an acoustic guitar that I would like to donate to a student, and my Mom was like, no way, my daughter wants to play guitar!” Bean goes on to say that she never even realized until she held the guitar in her hands how much she actually wanted to learn everything about it. “I put my book of poems together with chord structures and made melodies, that’s how I got started with music.”
However, being in the secular music industry wasn’t something that Bean thought initially she would get into. “You know –it’s kind of a weird situation,” she says, “growing up my parents were Evangelist’s, I was home-schooled, I was the kid who wasn’t allowed to watch or listen to any secular music. It’s funny how life works out.” She goes on to say that she has had no trouble from her parents transitioning into the industry. “My Mom watches my YouTube videos every night,” she says.
Her latest single, “Cops and Robbers,” is currently on radio and serves an anthem of resentment involving an ex that cheated on her way back when. “It was with my best friend at the time, he was just that guy.” I ask her if he knows, and she tells me that she doesn’t think so because there are a lot of lovie dovie songs about him too. Ugh –sometimes guys just don’t get it, you know girls? Watch the official video for “Cops and Robbers” here.
Like “Cops and Robbers,” Bean’s song “Sunshine,” stays close to her heart. “Before my Dad passed away when I was 12, my little sister said to me, ‘Noelle, you’ve written songs for everybody and you never write one for me.’ So, I sat down and I was listening to Copeland’s version of “You Are My Sunshine,” and I just had this moment of oh my God, Isabella’s nickname from my Dad is sunshine and that is going to be the title of this song.” She explains that the song was filled with so much built-up emotion about how drugs can tear your world apart, but despite the dysfunctions, there is still a light at the end of the tunnel. “You’ll never hit if you don’t swing,” she says sighing, “there were so many times when I just wanted to throw the towel in and get [mad] at the fact that I haven’t been signed to a major label yet.”
When it comes to giving advice to others, Bean mentions two things, persistence and consistency. “You have to be patient, if it’s meant to happen, it’s going to happen, so don’t give up.”
Outside of music, Bean is a social media guru! “I am always on social media,” she says. Recently, Bean’s website got a whole new look, “I am obsessed with the new layout,” she comments.
Bean’s next big release will be a mini album set to release this Spring. On the album will be five songs, one of which is called “Roller Coaster.” “It’s basically everything that I have gone through in the music industry, the ups and the downs. It’s like a love hate relationship explained in a three minute song. Her upcoming project for this Summer? A new video! She didn’t want to say what song she had in mind, but she told me Elicit will be the first to know!
From Elicit to Bean, thank you.
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