ten years on YouTube in five(ish) minutes

I started this channel as a fourteen year old back in 2015.
I'd been using it to post chatty videos, which are now lost to time (thank god), but then I wrote my first song and thought I should share it. I still have that video, though it's not up anymore, because I recorded it straight after school in my uniform and my big ol' school crest was front and centre lol, oops. The song was called "cigarette kisses" which is absolutely insane for a fourteen year old who has never smoked OR kissed before in his life to write; I think I was just reading too much fanfiction.
Now, the first public video--clips of which start and finish this one--is a cover of a dodie/"doddleoddle" song. I wanted so desperately to be like those musical youtubers I watched all the time and admired so deeply. Incidentally, all these years later I'm lucky enough to have met some of them and call them friends, which I can hardly imagine explaining to that little guy in the video playing covers on his new ukulele.
I'm twenty-four now, with a theatre degree under my belt and straighter teeth and a different pair of glasses. Making this was a bizarre but nice reminder of all the versions of myself that got me here. I mean, the bravery it took for that fourteen year old to put himself out there!!! to do it for years even when no one was watching!!! AND, to keep doing it when lots and lots of people were watching.
You might note that I missed the actual decade anniversary. The past few years I've struggled with my relationship to music for lots of reasons, and I've had fits and starts of posting/not posting here as a result. I tried so many times in 2025 to make a video that marked the occasion, but nothing I could think of felt like it sufficed. I didn't really know how to put into words the feeling of having this time capsule of myself. Then on New Year's Eve I realised I could just let the videos speak for themselves. So here it is! A day late, in a sense, lol. New Year's feels like the right time for this sort of thing, anyway.
Thank you for being here. Thank you thank you thank you. A decade's worth of thank yous. See you in another ten.

Sammy :^)

FOLLOW SAMMY COPLEY ON:
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