Hampton Bays Teen's Chainsmokers Music Video Goes Viral

Lindsay Dunn was doing her homework in her bedroom earlier this month when her iPhone wouldn’t stop buzzing.

Every minute her phone was lighting up, notifying the 15-year-old Hampton Bays resident that more people were subscribing to her YouTube channel, where she recently posted a music video she made covering two popular Chainsmokers songs.

She quickly rushed downstairs, grabbed her parents, and logged on to Facebook. The Chainsmokers, a New York City DJ duo, had just shared her video and it already garnered more than 34,000 views.

“Since then I’ve been checking [the video] all the time and it finally went up to 1 million views,” Lindsay said last week. “It was pretty crazy.”

As of Monday, Lindsay’s video on The Chainsmokers’ Facebook page had more than 2.6 million views.

The Chainsmokers shared the video on March 14 and complimented the way she mixed two of their songs, “Roses” and “Don’t Let Me Down.”

“Respect!” The Chainsmokers wrote. “This girl mashed up Roses & Don’t let me down just using herself twice!!! Lindsay Dunn Nice Work.”

The DJs are referring to the way the music video shows two images of Lindsay, side by side on the same stage. “Everyone keeps asking if I’m twins,” Lindsay said of the internet comments. But it was just a trick of editing.

The Loft Sound Studio in Plainview produced the video.

Lindsay started recording music at the studio regularly almost two years ago and covers a new song about once a month for her YouTube channel. Most of her videos feature her sitting on a stool, singing into a microphone, but this time Lindsay and the studio team decided to get a little more creative.

Lindsay explained that she really wanted to cover “Roses,” but the producers suggested that she cover “Don’t Let Me Down” because it was released just a few weeks prior. The newer song would be searched for online more often, Lindsay said, so the video would have a greater chance of being noticed. To compromise, they decided to do a mash-up of both songs.

Lindsay said this was a challenge because she didn’t know the lyrics to the new song, and her producers pushed her to learn the remix and record the video in 24 hours.

“I had to learn the whole thing in about a day so it was really hard,” she said, noting that she usually has about two weeks between recording a song and filming the video.

After the music video started circulating on the internet, her friends and music teachers at Hampton Bays High School congratulated her every time they saw the number of views go up.

“Shocking” was the word Lindsay’s father, Mike Dunn, a Hampton Bays School Board member and the Concerned Citizens of Hampton Bays president, used to describe the video getting so much attention.

“I’m really excited for her,” Mr. Dunn said. “I know she puts a lot of time into it and I could see how happy she was.”

Although this viral video was the first time Lindsay was noticed by a celebrity, her voice is well known around Hampton Bays. Lindsay often sings “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Hampton Bays High School sporting events, she is in the school choir and play, and she has won local singing competitions including the Southampton Youth Bureau’s Hamptons Got Talent in February. At that competition, Lindsay took home first place after singing “Not About Angels” by Birdy and “Counting Stars” by OneRepublic.

In 2015, Lindsay and her older sister, Taylor Dunn, took home third place in the same competition for a dance routine they performed together.

Lindsay hopes to eventually be able to combine her dancing—she has danced at the Dance Centre of the Hamptons in Westhampton Beach for 13 years—with her singing.

“I did the two things separately for a lot of time,” Lindsay said. “Putting them together is weird, so I don’t dance when I sing.”

She said she is thinking about trying to add some dance to her next music video, which will be posted to her YouTube channel in April.