SAARA

Sara Maria Forsberg (born: ), better known as SAARA (previously Smokahontas or Smoukahontas, sometimes Smo) is a YouTuber from Finland who is best known for her “What Languages Sound Like To Foreigners” video which went viral in 2014. She is also known for her “One Girl, X Things” series of videos where she does various things such as playing different instruments or speaking English with different accents. 
Sara mostly posts vlogs and music and speaks English in her videos although some videos has been in her native language Finnish, mainly early uploads. Sometimes she ends her videos by snapping a banana in half. 
She is also a singer-songwriter and has a contract with Universal Music Group.
As of June 2020, SAARA has about 150 million views on her channel.
==History==
===Preceding the fame===
Before her Youtube career, in 2009 Sara posted her first internet video about her own life to IRC-Galleria, which is a Finnish image gallery site popular in 2000s. However, it was shortly removed by Sara herself as she was bullied at school for it and promised to herself that she would never upload anything again.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYXrcrG5pSAhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JSuvWJLLb0
On January 9, 2011 she created a channel called sarajean4 for cover songs by her. She made three covers before abandoning this channel, the last video on sarajean4 was published in November 2011. Between 2011-2014 Sara also had a blog on Blogspot which she updated semi-actively during that time.https://translate.google.fi/translate?hl=fi&tab=wT&authuser=0&sl=fi&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fyle.fi%2Faihe%2Fartikkeli%2F2014%2F03%2F17%2Fkielinainen-smoukahontas-ei-noussut-tyhjasta-katso-vanha-lauluvideoIt is unknown when exactly the blog was started but it is linked in the description of a video on sarajean4 channel which makes it possible that the blog existed back in 2011. The blog has been removed since thus it is no longer available.
On August 20, 2013 Sara created her Youtube channel known today. Then called as Smokahontas, she released her first video “From ugly to pretty” day after founding the channel. It was not until February 2014 when she officially started vlogging in Finnish by releasing “Avausvlogi” on February 3, 2014.
===What Languages Sound Like To Foreigners===
Exactly a month after the first vlog post on March 3, 2014 a video called “What Languages Sound Like To Foreigners” was released where Sara imitated how languages sound to a person who doesn't know the language at all by speaking gibberish and using the respective accent. The video went viral overnight and following the success, very soon a sequel simply called “What Languages Sound Like To Foreigners #2” was released where Sara reimitated some languages while adding a few new ones as well. At this point she switched the language of her channel from Finnish to English.
On April 7, 2014 Sara visited The Ellen DeGeneres Show where she mimicked languages for Ellen to guess. During the visit she received a camera stand as a gift as she did not have one previously and had to balance her camera on different things while filming. The camera stand was accomppanied with a camera.https://translate.google.fi/translate?hl=fi&tab=wT&authuser=0&sl=fi&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.keskipohjanmaa.fi%2Fuutiset%2F360621%2Fsmoukahontas-ellen-degeneres-showhunhttps://translate.google.fi/translate?hl=fi&tab=wT&authuser=0&sl=fi&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.stara.fi%2F2014%2F04%2F07%2Fsara-maria-forsberg-ihastutti-ellen-degeneresin-vieraana%2FThe Visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3n5t8lgJNlw
===After blowing up===
On March 9, 2014 she started a new video series of sorts by releasing “One Girl, 14 Genres” where she sang fictitious songs in different genres. It was thanks to this video that she got a record deal with Capitol few months later.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fb9OO6l4Lns Sara continued to release other installments to the “One Girl, X Things” series as well as traditional vlogs. On January 8, 2015 she released “Girl Speaks 20 Languages” where she attempted to actually speak featured languages rather than mimicking them. As of June 2020 it is her the second most watched video with over 20 million views after the original “What Languages Sound Like To Foreigners” video. So far the latest addition to the series is a video called “One Girl, 14 Accents” released on November 5, 2016 where she speaks English with various accents.
In April 2014 she contracted with My Damn Channel and began to host a new channel under them named West Toast which launched on July 1, 2014. The final upload to West Toast was made on May 28, 2015 which was announced as a “season finale” but there has been no signs of another season since.Link to the comment Sara announcing “season finale”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iUDTUVYrZs&lc=UggTBUvie-Dzi3gCoAEC
Around April 2015 she changed her YouTube name from Smokahontas to SAARA which is also her artist name.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wf7lVxLf1gM In August 2015 she released a cover for the first time since the sarajean4 channel. She covered “Sugar” by Maroon 5. 
===Buzzcut and growing it out===
On August 24, 2017 Sara released a video “SHAVING MY HEAD” where she cut her hair off on camera and explained that she always wanted to do that and actually disliked how longer hair was usually in the way when doing things.
After that she has been posting hair growth updates intermittently. The first update was released in March 2018.
==Musical career==
Initially, Sara was signed by Capitol Records and released her debut single “Ur Cool” on April 21, 2015 which charted in her home country Finland. In her video “I Left My Record Deal.” published on March 6, 2016, Sara revealed that she had left Capitol due to not able to continue her career without her producer who had walked out from the label earlier. Additionally Sara confessed that she personally hated “Ur Cool” and didn’t initially want it as the first single but the producer persuaded her.
About a week later on March 14, 2016 she released a new song on her Youtube channel titled “I Do”. In April 2016 Sara got contract with Universal Music Group and went to release her first EP named “Hello I'm Saara” in May 2016.
During 2017 she released three singles: “Permission to Love”, “Superpowers” and “All The Love”. In 2018, another EP “Almost Acoustic” was released including an acoustic version of “I Do”. Her latest single release “Sangria” was released on August 24, 2018.
Sara has also written songs for other artists such as Girls’ Generation, Lisa Ajax and Red Velvet.
==Films and Television==
Sara has been featured on various TV-shows in Finland. She was one of the jugdes on the fifth season of the Finnish version of Got Talent in 2016. She was a co-host in a programme called Kaikki Vastaan 1 in 2017 and appeared as a competitor on Pallon Ympäri in 2018.
She hosted a British game show for children called Remotely Funny, which first season was aired in 2017 and second in 2018, both on CBBC.
In the end of 2015 it was announced that Sara was working with Lucasfilm creating an alien language for the film Star Wars: The Force Awakens which released in December 2015. Later she developed a language for the 2016 film Star Trek Beyond, where she also had a minor voice role.
==Personal life==
Sara was born in Pietarsaari, Finland and currently lives Helsinki, Finland. She had previously lived in New York on January 1, 2020 https://translate.google.fi/translate?hl=fi&tab=wT&authuser=0&sl=fi&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.is.fi%2Fviihde%2Fart-2000006351957.html as well as Los Angeles, California from 2014 to 2018. 
==Trivia ==
*In “Huultenpienennysleikkaus” it was revealed that she dislikes the term "vlogger" and prefers to refer herself with an alternative term.
*Sara revealed on a Finnish radio show in 2017 that she has never used the camera given by Ellen as it became clear that her own camera was actually better.https://www.ruutu.fi/video/2936881
*Her sister Vera Forsberg competed on the Finnish version of The Voice in 2016. https://translate.google.fi/translate?hl=fi&tab=wT&authuser=0&sl=fi&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.iltalehti.fi%2Fviihde%2Fa%2F2015121420833852
==References==
Category:Finnish YouTubers
Category:Music YouTubers
Category:Vlogging YouTubers
Category:Users who joined in 2013
Category:One million subscribers