Julie Ragbeer Hopes These Aren't Her 15 Minutes of Fame
She wanted to bring awareness to her music. Instead, she found internet fame. Can she make it last?
Music
You know her as Julie Ragbeer, the 24-year-old singer-songwriter whose paid promo with X, formerly Twitter, account Pop Tingz launched her into seemingly overnight internet fame.
Legally, her name is Victoria, but it’s Julie who’s been a centerpiece of internet chatter and memes for the past few weeks.
Julie is a nickname used by close family and friends.
“I thought it would be nice to change from Victoria to Julie because Julie was a tribute and an ode to my dad who passed away,” Ragbeer says.
A creative himself, it was Ragbeer’s father who gave her her passion for the arts, she says.
Now, she wants her art to be taken seriously.
“There are so many things that I want to do, and this is my first time getting recognition. I want to improve in my work and I want to be taken seriously as an artist,” Ragbeer says.
Ragbeer realizes that virality doesn’t last forever. She plans to release new material, including a video for “Mary Whiton Calkins” that’s currently in the editing stage. Besides that, Ragbeer is working on an EP, which will be pop-rock, and an album, which will have a pop-rock and pop-punk sound.
“I’d like to think it isn’t 15 minutes of fame, but I also have to be realistic because a lot of people become memes and then it fades away or it dies down. I want to be more than a meme — I want to be a singer-songwriter, I want to make it to Hollywood,” Ragbeer says.
Sebastian Akselberg produced songs like “Be My Adam,” “Fight Against Your Fleshy Lusts,” and “The Devil Is In Your Heart,” all of which appear on 2023’ Perplex. Other songs are made with a ghost producer, Ragbeer says.
“My goal has always been to be a singer-songwriter. I always wanted to be a mainstream artist,” she says. But there was a time where she considered discarding her music altogether.
The lyrics to all her songs were written five years ago when she was 19 years old, but Ragbeer took a hiatus from music after her debut single, “Rejected,” was released in 2019.
What made her finish and release her catalog of music years later?
“I wanted to complete what 19-year-old me couldn’t,” Ragbeer says.
She may be big on the internet, but no one has recognized her in real life. Yet. She anticipates the real-life attention happening soon enough, so she’s taking in the moments of peace while she still can.
“Once people start recognizing you, you lose your privacy, so I’m enjoying my privacy for now,” Ragbeer says.