Lindsey Stirling

Combining her love of classical music with electronic dance and hip-hop, California artist Lindsey Stirling is a violinist, dancer, and performer who surpassed early viral fame with a solo career that captured an audience in the pop mainstream. Early on, she was known for her YouTube cover videos and for competing on the 2010 season of America’s Got Talent, but she quickly became a crossover success after the release of her self-titled 2012 solo debut. As the decade progressed, she issued multiple Top Five, gold-certified albums, including 2014′s Shatter Me and 2016′s Brave Enough, both of which found her expanding her sound with singers including Lzzy Hale, Dia Frampton, Christina Perri, Rivers Cuomo, and others. Stirling has continued to explore new musical territory, releasing the 2017 holiday album Warmer in the Winter and collaborating with vocalists Amy Lee and Elle King on her chart-topping 2019 LP Artemis. After another holiday album, 2022′s Snow Waltz, she returned with the existentially charged Duality in 2024. Born in Santa Ana, California, Stirling grew up in Arizona and began studying classical violin at the age of five. In her teens, she played in a rock band called Stomp on Melvin and competed in the Junior Miss competition, winning the Arizona Junior Miss title. An active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, she studied therapeutic recreation at Brigham Young University. In 2010, Stirling appeared as the “hip-hop violinist” on NBC’s America’s Got Talent, in which she showcased her unique performance style of dancing and playing the violin at the same time accompanied by electronic backing tracks. After finishing in the quarter-finals of the show, Stirling began focusing more on filming videos for her YouTube channel. Working with director/cinematographer Devin Graham, she produced a series of videos featuring her in beautiful, evocative outdoor settings or with striking visual accompaniment; one of her videos, “Crystallize,” ended up being viewed more than 100 million times. She issued her self-titled debut album of all-original material in 2012 through her own Lindseystomp label. The set sold over 200,000 copies in the United States as an independent release, and was certified gold in Germany (selling over 100,000 copies there), Austria, and Switzerland. After successful concert tours throughout the United States, Europe, Asia, and Russia, Stirling signed a deal with Lady Gaga’s management firm, Atom Factory, and reissued her eponymous debut album through Universal Music. In 2013, Stirling released a pair of collaborative EPs — one with Tyler Ward, the other with Ward and Chester See. Her sophomore long-player, Shatter Me, arrived the following year. It was her first to include collaborations with other vocalists (Lzzy Hale, Dia Frampton), and it debuted at number two on the album charts. Along with taking part in several new collaborations (Jesse J, Pentatonix, Joy Enriquez), Stirling devoted much of 2014 and early 2015 to a massive world tour that took her across North America, through Europe, and into Oceania. In June 2015 she announced the completion of an autobiography, The Only Pirate at the Party, and began work on a new album. Released in 2016, Brave Enough was a partially fan-funded production that included the single “Arena.” The album — which debuted atop both the Billboard classical and dance/electronic charts — featured appearances from Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo, Indian-American rapper Raja Kumari, Christian rapper Lecrae, Christina Perri, and Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness. Her collaboration with the latter, “Something Wild,” was chosen as the theme song to the Disney reboot of Pete's Dragon, which was released in 2016. At the end of the year and into 2017, Stirling embarked on a mammoth world tour in support of the album, taking in dates in the U.S., Europe, Australia, and into South America. In May, she was awarded the Top Dance/Electronic Album at the 2017 Billboard Music Awards for Brave Enough. The single “Love’s Just a Feeling” appeared at the same time and featured guest vocals from Irish singer/songwriter Rooty. In October 2017, Stirling released her fourth studio album, the holiday-themed Warmer in the Winter, which featured guest spots from Trombone Shorty, Alex Gaskarth of All Time Low, and Sabrina Carpenter. That same year, she competed on the 25th season of Dancing with the Stars. She returned to music in 2019, releasing the single “Underground” and announcing her fifth studio album, Artemis. The record, which used the eponymous goddess as a framework for exploring perseverance, was released in September of the same year. Artemis featured guests Amy Lee of Evanescence (“Life Goes On and On”) and Elle King (“The Upside”). Lee returned the favor, including Stirling on Evanescence’s 2020 song “Use My Voice.” The violinist was also featured that same year on singer Avril Lavigne’s song “We Are Warriors.” In 2021, she released the stand-alone single “Lose You Now” featuring Mako. Building upon the Artemis instrumental “Guardian,” Stirling tasked Mako with penning the lyrics for the track, which was created as a tribute to her late father. The following year, Stirling returned to holiday standards with her second themed set, Snow Waltz, which featured the rock-tinged “Ice Storm.” By 2024, she had readied her seventh full-length Duality. Exploring themes of inner conflict, Stirling delivered another reliably charged set of pop-violin anthems, this time featuring guests Royal & the Serpent (“Inner Gold”) and Walk off the Earth’s Sarah Blackwood (the Gloria Gaynor-interpolating “Survive”). ~ Matt Collar