Schoolgirl becomes YouTube hit

2012-01-23 09:41

Sydney - An 8-year-old Brisbane schoolgirl's innocent world of backyard bliss has been turned upside down after her heavy metal song about loving her pets went viral on YouTube and sold up a storm on iTunes.

Australians were divided on Monday over whether Juliet's smash-hit, My First Hardcore Song, and its role in catapulting her into the commercial world of trust funds and T-shirt sales was for the best.

But Juliet's mother, Kristina Childs, defended a YouTube posting that received 12 million hits in just four days.

"It wasn't a set-up or anything," she told the Brisbane Times. "We harmlessly shot a video to show our friends and family and then it went all crazy."

The lyrics of the 59-second song, in which Juliet shares her love for her 2-year-old miniature Dachshund, Robert, and her tropical fish, were her own work.

The video was shot by Childs and the piece put to a thrash-music soundtrack by music producer and family friend Rob Sharpe.

"Basically, we're very comfortable and know that we never intended for any of this to happen. There's never been any point where Juliet has been exploited in any sense of the fashion."

Childs said she and her husband, Steven, put the song on iTunes and decided to sell T-shirts to prevent others from exploiting their daughter.

The money they earn will go into a trust fund for Juliet.

"I had an inbox full of e-mails and people were already doing covers of it on YouTube," she told the paper.

"We were like 'We should probably just put the song on iTunes in case someone else rips a bad copy of it and puts it up'... so we put it up and within 24 hours it went to number one [on the metal singles chart]."

Here's the YouTube video:

- SAPA