Reggie's Story So Far

Hey, I'm Reggie On The Mic aka Reginald Borington, I'm a singer songwriter from the North East of England. My Musical journey began very late in life, I didn't grow up in a musically active family or surrounded by friends with a huge passion for music. Sure, I listened to music just like everyone else, but it always seemed like something that "other people" made and I was never exposed to that world. Truth be told, I didn't know I could sing until I was 42 years old, which as of now is 2 years ago. I did a handful of karaoke nights throughout my 20's, I also auditioned for the X Factor back in 2009 just for the experience but I couldn't sing, I tried, but I sounded shocking. It wasn't until early 2023, as I was hanging up my mic and retiring from a completely separate YouTube career that I looked at all this audio studio gear that I have and thought... you know what? I'm going to give this singing thing a try. It didn't sound too bad, enough to start work on. Since early 2023, I have practiced singing for several hours every single day. I documented my journey on TikTok, posting short clips of where I'm at for feedback and so that I can look back and compare progress. Thousands upon thousands of hours later, I practiced and practiced... and practiced. But I didn't know what I was doing or what my voice was. Should I sing with an accent to sound unique? Should I force out a raspy voice because that's what people seem to like? After nearly 2yrs of going around and around, I finally made myself comfortable with how I sound naturally rather than putting on a voice that I thought other people would want to hear. I'm not 100% there yet, but my transformation since 2023 is dramatic. Throughout my time on TikTok I had always recorded my vocals into a music studio application (DAW) and mastered them with professional plugins, albeit badly. But in 2024, I began self learning that side of music production a little more, and in July 2024 I released my first studio album called "Club 200", an album of 17 cover songs. With Club 200 being a tongue in cheek reference to the typical number of views my posts on TikTok would get! Ultimately, as expensive as that album was to produce, I took it off the streaming sites a year later as my vocals have improved so much since then, I didn't feel like it set a good or accurate enough impression of me as an artist. Sure, it's a signal point showing progress, but if that's the first album somebody hears from me... they're not to know this. Since then, my journey on TikTok has taken a bit of a twist recently, writing and recording adult comedy based parody songs has seen my TikTok account explode in growth from 3k followers to 90k over the course of several weeks. That in turn has led to an increased demand for music on the streaming services with my monthly viewing stats on Spotify peaking at 13k at one point. As we stand today, my primary goal is to build a large and sustainable audience on TikTok through cover song performances, then when the time is right, write and release original songs into an audience who have a genuine want to listen to them.