For the last week, the surprise hit song “Vanessa Van D” has been playing in a loop in my head. And I’m not the only one. Creators have been posting their own videos dancing to the song.
The infectious bop comes from Vanessa Van Deusen, a 17-year-old singer-songwriter from small-town Carbondale, Pa., who suddenly has TikTok fanning out over her.
On Aug. 3, Van Deusen posted a video of herself performing her now-signature song at Lakeland Orchard & Cidery in the Scranton area. The setup was small-scale: a bandshell, a poster of herself on the wall and plastic Adirondack chairs for attendees. Yet Van Deusen treated it like the biggest stage in the world.
The video initially gained little traction. A few weeks later, TikTok’s algorithm found it, turning it into For You Page fare.
“I fell asleep, and the video had, like, 30 likes,” Van Deusen tells Yahoo. “I woke up and it had like 5,000. It just kept growing from there.”
It now has over 2 million views. A second TikTok of Van Deusen singing the same name-checking earworm — also at a small venue while her two besties twirled batons — has racked up another 575,000 views.
“Yes, I am”: TikTok discovers Van D’s confidence
Social media videos go viral for all kinds of reasons. In this case, the Gen Z teen’s earnestness — a bright spot in a sometimes cynical world — along with that catchy “Van D, Van D, Van D” hook turned viewers into instant fans.
You can practically watch it unfold in the comments on these two videos.
“Well, aren’t you a confident little go-getter,” one person wrote.
Van Deusen hopped into the comments with a sincerity that neutralized any potential shade: “Yes, I am,” she replied.
When another person wrote, “AND THE CROWD GOES mild,” she responded, “They’re ✨admiring✨.”
Others reached for pop-culture comparisons. “‘A Little Bit Alexis’ walked so Vanessa Van D could run,” one person wrote, referring to the memorable Schitt’s Creeksong. Rebecca Black’s name came up too. Black was 13 when “Friday” went viral in 2011, and she became a target of widespread online ridicule.
But Van Deusen’s comment section followed a different trajectory: The snark soon gave way to defense.
“Oh, let’s make fun of the girl who took a risk and put herself out there creatively!!!!” someone wrote. That comment has about 2,000 likes.
Van Deusen, who manages her own TikTok, has felt the love from supporters.
“I posted a video a few days after the big one blew up, saying thank you for all your compliments and criticisms,” she says. “People were just rooting me on in the comments, being like, ‘Who’s being mean?’ I have a fanbase now. They’re so protective of me. That’s when it really hit me: People actually want me to succeed.”
Van Deusen’s growing fandom already has nicknames, including the “Fan Ds” and the “Van Divas,” she says.
The attention has brought opportunities for the teen. Brands have offered to send her products, Spotify has appeared in her comments and she has connected with the TikTok boy band Boy Throb.
TikTok has nothing on middle school
So where did Van Deusen, who graduated high school in June, one year early, get the chutzpah not only to get onstage and be her own hype woman, but to let TikTok know she’s unbothered? She’s had practice.
Van Deusen began singing in middle school, an age when, as she puts it, “girls can be brutal.” During those years, she says, classmates at her small private school bullied her.
“These girls were ruthless,” she says. “They were bullying me every day. It got to a point where I’m like, ‘Do I really want to do this?’ And I’m like, ‘You know what? Yeah.'”
She turned some of that hurt into music. One of her first songs, “Hey! (Are You a Lot Like Me)” was inspired by a friend who became a bully.
“Ever since then, I’ve had people criticize me,” she says. “But I do know who my real friends are, and I’m forever grateful for them.”
How ‘Vanessa Van D’ came to be
Van Deusen is currently unsigned but has been meeting with the same record label executive for about three years. Each time, he’s given her a new assignment — first a ballad, then an anthem.
For the anthem assignment, she collaborated with her producer, “and that’s how we got ‘Van D,'” she says.
Even Van Deusen initially underestimated its appeal.
“When I first heard it, I was kind of iffy on it,” she says. “It wasn’t catching me yet. But a few days later, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I can’t get this out of my head,'” she says.
The timing of the song’s viral rise couldn’t have been better. Just days after the video took off, Van Deusen flew to Los Angeles on a previously planned trip to record more music.
“That just brought everyone along with me,” she says, referring to how she shared behind-the-scenes footage on TikTok with her new followers. “It was amazing.”
“I want to be up there with the legends”
Van Deusen has been performing since she was 2, starting with baton twirling and later adding singing and dancing. By high school, she was twirling fire.
Performance runs in the family. Her mother owns the twirling school where she trained, while her father once played in a band. At 17, Van Deusen, an only child, relies on her parents to help her navigate the industry.
“They’ve been the best at guiding me into the right decisions about where to go and what to do,” she says. “I plan on keeping them on my team as I get older.”
Now that she’s found TikTok fame, it’s full-speed ahead.
“I’ve wanted to be in the light since I was a little girl,” she says. “With it becoming more and more apparent to me that this is a real thing — that this can happen, and now that it is happening — it propels me even more.”
Van Deusen points to Taylor Swift and Sabrina Carpenter, two stars with Pennsylvania roots, as models for what might be possible beyond her hometown.
“I grew up [listening to] Taylor and Sabrina and have watched them grow and thrive,” she says. “Knowing that they’re as big as they are definitely influences me. [I think:] ‘Yeah, I’m from a small town in Pennsylvania, but that doesn’t stop me from going to Los Angeles or Nashville or New York.'”
Ultimately, she hopes other young performers will one day look at her the way she once looked at her idols.
“I want someone younger than me to say, ‘Look, that’s Vanessa Van D,’ and be like, ‘Wow, I want to be like her someday,'” Van Deusen says. “I want to be the next Taylor. I want to be the next Sabrina. I want to be up there with the legends.”
For now, she’s embracing where she is. Her next performance will be at Nay Aug Park in Scranton on Oct. 11, followed by a meet-and-greet.
