Molly Kate Kestner
Date Signed: March 2015
Label: Atlantic
Type of Music: Singer-Songwriter/Pop
Management: Melanie Mitrof - Bill Silva Entertainment Booking: Seth Seigel - WME
Legal: Jeff Worob - Serling Rooks Hunter McKoy & Worob, LLP
Publicity: [email protected]
Web: mollykatekestnermusic.com
A&R: Ian Hunter - Atlantic Records; Gabz Landman
More and more artists are being discovered via YouTube as label execs and their teams comb the Internet in search of raw talent. While many of today’s web discoveries were seen performing covers of popular songs, Molly Kate Kestner created a huge buzz with an original song, “His Daughter,” a spiritually driven narrative about someone she knew who had been abused and got pregnant at a young age. Kestner recorded a raw video of herself performing it on her great grandmother’s out-of-tune piano on “this hideous, green, iPhone 4 with a cracked screen” and posted it on her Facebook page.
Within 48 hours, the clip had amassed 13,570 likes. When she posted it on YouTube, actor/social media star George Takei shared the link with his nine million-plus followers with the provocative question: “Has America found its young Adele?” Her views skyrocketed––they now surpass 15.2 million––and the song caught the attention of celebs like Jordin Sparks, Ashley Judd and, not long after, Diane Sawyer, who introduced a segment about Kestner’s viral fame, which included a live performance on Good Morning America.
The first and only major label execs who personally visited her in Minnesota in response to the buzz were Mike Caren, then-President of Worldwide A&R at Warner Music Group, and Ian Hunter, VP of A&R Research at Atlantic Records. “They immediately saw me as a prolific songwriter who could make a meaningful, long-term career out of this, rather than a ‘one song wonder,’” Kestner says. “They immediately wanted to hook up sessions in L.A. for me with established writers and help me develop my craft. To me, that resonated. I have always believed that if you’re writing music that’s true, your truth will always be relevant.”
