By Cory Midgarden
I love cover songs. I don't know what it is about them, but one of my favorite pastimes — a guilty pleasure if you will — is to log onto YouTube, type in the name of a song I'm digging and watch someone other than the original artist sing their rendition of the tune.
I'm sure this is why I've always been such a big fan of TV singing competitions as well, but that isn't the point. The point of this post is that last April I was introduced to, maybe, one of the most amazing covers I'd ever experienced in my entire life. And that's saying a lot, since I spend much of my free time and weekends doing nothing but looking for these videos (I'm only kind of exaggerating).
Anyway, the introduction came via email from my friend, who is aware of my obsession, with the text "You're going to DIE" in the subject line. I clicked on the link, which maybe had a few hundred views at the time, and there was Karmin. The song they were performing was Chris Brown's "Look at Me Now," and the girl, whose name I thought was Karmin at the time, pretty much killed me when I got to 1:16 in the video.
My friend was right; they were so good I almost died. But since I didn't, I knew my newfound mission in life was to get them on the MTV show I was working on at the time. "The Seven" was a countdown of the seven things (hence the title) we needed our audience to know about each day. And these two were something people needed to know about — if they hadn't already.
I got in touch with the pair, and within a few days, Amy Heidemann and Nick Noonan were in New York City getting ready to perform for our studio audience. I was so excited! And they were too. They were awesome during sound check and looking as cute as can be, both wearing V-neck tees and jeans... but something was missing.
As I looked at the twosome before they took our Times Square stage, I realized what was off. The woman standing in front of me had a stick-straight 'do, while the one from the video had some extra flair to her hair. I asked Amy if she'd be interested in recreating her look from the video, and she was more than happy to accept. With only a few minutes to spare, we hooked her up with one of our stylists and before our very eyes, her signature "suicide roll" was born.
Karmin then took the stage performing "Look at Me Now," Weezy's "6 Foot 7 Foot," and original track "On Your Side."
Since then, I've worked with Karmin (and Amy's suicide roll) on several occasions (they even gave me a very special birthday shout-out while I worked on VH1's "Big Morning Buzz Live"), watching them grow into the stars they are today. As proud of them as I've been over these past months, it wasn't until last night, when I saw Amy on the cover of Rolling Stone that I really realized how far the two have come.
To be recognized by Rolling Stone magazine as a woman who rocks is an amazing achievement. Karmin has come so far in such a short period of time and if anyone deserves such an accolade, it's them.
Congratulations, Amy and Nick! I look forward to following your careers for years to come.
