How YouTuber Madilyn Bailey turns her haters into inspiration

Katie Mather
·Internet Culture Reporter

When Madilyn Bailey started uploading videos to YouTube 10 years ago, she had no idea music would take on a deeper meaning to her than just a creative outlet or passion. For the third episode of In The Know: Profiles, we met with Bailey to talk about her career and how one of her most popular videos (clocked in at 9 million views as of now) came from reading mean comments.

"When I was 7, my dad sat me down and taught me how to write my first song — he could probably tell that I was very emotionally charged," Bailey said, explaining how she got into music. "I 100 percent believe in fully honoring your feelings and what you're in, and taking those emotions and putting them into a song releases my body from feeling so heavy with them."

Bailey's emotional connections to her covers and original songs clearly resonate with the YouTube audience. She has 6.7 million subscribers and considers them to be an extended part of her family.

"The cool part about YouTube is you post a video and instantly you get feedback," she says. "For better or worse — hate comments, great comments, critiques — like, I feel like they were my sounding board."

The YouTube community provided not only feedback, but also inspiration. After reading a series of mean comments that concluded with "no offense," Bailey though it would be funny and cathartic to write a song around them.

That song — 'I Wrote a Song Using Only Hate Comments' — is one of her most popular videos to date.

"It kind of reminded me of how writing should be," Bailey said. "It should be that — I should not be overthinking it like I normally do. It helps me free up my process moving forward."

For Bailey, writing that song reminded her of what her dad originally instilled in her about the songwriting process. Since reading those comments and uploading the song, she feels as though she's back in a positive rhythm of writing.

"I do it all for the songs, I do it all for the music. I get to wake up every single day and create stuff — that's my job. It's crazy."

Watch the full interview with Madilyn Bailey in this episode of In The Know: Profiles.