Malinda Kathleen Reese, more commonly known as MALINDA, is an American singer-songwriter and actress best known for her Irish music covers on Tiktok. She is also known for her popular youtube channel, Twisted Translations, where she would translate the lyrics of a song into several different languages and then back into english using google translate. More recently, she has released much of her own original music and vlogs on her main channel, MALINDA, and has also gone on tour and released a movie.
Much of her music is an incredible blend between folk and pop music, often including features from Irish music including her frequent use of the Irish flute. A good example of this is her 2023 album 'It's All True' which includes 10 of her original songs, several of which were included in her film which shares the name 'It's All True'. MALINDA was born in 1994 to Mary Hall Surface, a playwright and teacher, and Kevin Reese, an actor. She spent much of her youth backstage in many theatre performances and as a teenager, went to the Interlochen Arts Camp in Michigan. Her breakthrough was when she came to create the viral 'google translate sings' video series on youtube, in which she would take popular songs at the time and translate them into several other languages before returning to english, creating an extremely funny and entertaining source of content. Despite the popularity that this channel brought her, MALINDA always had a strong passion for more serious music and storytelling. This is when her focus began to drift towards writing her on original folk and indie style music.
These songs ere often inspired by history, mythology and even her own personal experiences. She has built an incredibly successful career as an independent musician, funding many of her projects through platforms such as patreon and closely engaging with her audience. Her poetic, folky songwriting style and her ability to tell a story through her songs are some of the main things I admire about MALINDA. Her style is very close to the kind of music that I would love to write in the future. What makes me admire her more is that she started her youtube channel from something so small and so simple, but so effective that it was enough to launch her entire career path into action.
I think that her solo artist career and especially the style of music in which she writes is definitely one of my biggest ambitions for the future. At the moment, I'm not entirely sure how I can jump start into this kind of area but I know that it isn't something that can or will happen quickly and will need stepping stones to get to that point. Other areas of interest in the music industry job area include work as a session musician or a film/video game composer but as a whole, I am not sure what I want to or will do in the future. I somewhat see this as a good thing because it makes it easier for me to keep my options open rather than fixating on one result.