Lia Marie Johnson

Early and personal life

Johnson was born in Wahiawa, Hawaii, the daughter of a military family. Her family eventually settled in California. In 2012, in a combined episode of Teens React and Elders React about the 2012 United States presidential election, Johnson stated that she is a Democrat.

Career

Johnson's YouTube account was created on December 17, 2007, with early videos uploaded by her mother which featured her performances at talent shows, and church recitals. After two years, Johnson began to control the output of the channel, creating content that has come to include personal commentary, sketch comedy, and musical performances. In 2010, Johnson began to work with the Fine Brothers as a recurring guest on their Kids React series. This exposure increased the traffic to her own channel and became an early source of her online fame. In the aftermath of the initial series episodes, she was surprised by the phenomenon of strangers knowing her and approaching her as fans, and remarked "I think Kids React was my very first viral video, 'cus everyone knew my name after that."

In 2011, Johnson was added to the recurring cast of the spin-off series Teens React, and in 2014 was moved again to the newly established YouTubers React, which featured herself and various well known YouTube personalities. In 2014, Johnson appeared at the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards, and starred in Terry the Tomboy: The Movie, a spin-off film based on the eponymous character she portrays on the Nickelodeon sketch comedy series, AwesomenessTV. In 2015 she covered the single "Latch" by Disclosure, singing with Alejandro Luis Manzano of Boyce Avenue, and released it on YouTube. The song was originally performed by singer Sam Smith. Johnson has also been featured on the covers of Adweek and BYou Magazine. On January 9, 2015, Johnson released her first single, "Moment Like You", along with a music video which can be found on her YouTube channel.

Johnson's YouTube career had noticeably come to a halt over the course of 2016 as she had not posted any videos for over 7 months, until she uploaded a video on September 28 explaining to her fans that she has been working on a music album for the past 2 years and that she was signed to Capitol Records. In October 2016, she released her first single through Capitol Records titled "DNA" which surpassed 8 million Spotify streams. On February 17, 2017 Johnson released her second single "Cold Heart Killer". The music video for the song was released on March 10, 2017.