Lindsey Stirling is an American violinist, songwriter and dancer. She presents choreographed violin performances, in live and music videos found on her official YouTube channel, which she created in 2007. Stirling is the middle child of three daughters of Stephen and Diane Stirling. Stirling describes her childhood as being raised in a modest household and stated “I would not trade my humble childhood years for anything else.” From a young age, Stirling had a fascination for dance and desired to take both dancing and violin lessons. In an interview, she said, “…ever since I was a kid, I’ve always wished that I could dance, but my parents said, ‘You [can] choose violin or you [can] choose dance, but we can’t afford both’, and I chose violin. So this is kind of a fulfilment – it’s funny to say, but this is something I’ve always wanted to do.”
Stirling performs a variety of music styles, from classical to pop and rock to electronic dance music. Aside from original work, her discography contains covers of works by other musicians such as Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and Vivaldi and various soundtracks. In 2010, at the age of 23, Stirling was a quarter-finalist on season five of America’s Got Talent, where she was described as a “hip hop violinist”. She impressed the judges not only by mixing hip-hop, pop, and classical music on the violin, but by incorporating dancing with playing the violin, which she also does on her tours and official music videos. On a live-chat, Stirling explained, “It is very unnatural to dance while playing the violin. I had to practice so hard to learn how to do it, but now it is part of my expression and it comes naturally. I have to know a song perfectly before I can even begin to move. Once I know a song really well, I can then have fun dancing.” Dancing made a huge impact not only in her performances, but also with her music: “I loved dance music so I started with that and wrote ‘Transcendence’, ‘Electric Daisy’, and ‘Spontaneous Me’.”[
Her music video “Crystalize” finished as the eighth-most watched video of 2012 on YouTube, and her cover version of “Radioactive” with Pentatonix won Response of the Year in the first YouTube Music Awards in 2013. Stirling achieved one million singles sold worldwide by August 2014. As of May 2023, her Lindseystomp YouTube channel exceeded 13 million subscribers and over 3 billion total views.
Stirling has been named in Forbes magazine’s 30 Under 30 in Music: The Class of 2015. Forbes notes her quarter-finalist position on America’s Got Talent season five in 2010, a No. 2 position on the Billboard 200 for her second album Shatter Me in 2014, and her 11 million subscribers on YouTube.
Stirling’s debut album was a commercial success in Europe, selling 200,000 copies in Germany, winning a platinum certification; three additional certifications were given by Austria, Switzerland, and Poland. The album was nominated for the 2014 Billboard Music Awards for Top Dance/Electronic Albums. Stirling’s second album Shatter Me won Top Dance/Electronic Album at the 2015 Billboard Music Awards.
