Colleen Ballinger

Colleen Mae Ballinger (born: ), also known as her online persona Miranda Sings (formerly known as PsychoSoprano),Colleen has stated that she changed her channel name to show respect for people with mental illnesses. is an American YouTube vlogger, actress, musician, and comedian. On her YouTube channel, Colleen includes sketches, music and updates on her life. The channel also included vlogs, however, in late 2014 she made a separate vlog channel, entitled 'Colleen Vlogs'.
Colleen has many celebrity friends, such as Ariana Grande and JoJo Siwa. Colleen herself is an actress and starred in her self-written and produced Netflix Original TV show Haters Back Off! with the help of her brother Christopher Ballinger.
==YouTube career==
Colleen began her YouTube journey in 2006, where she posted videos of her vocal performances with friends. Though Ballinger's channel didn't really take off until her alias (Miranda Sings) gained fame, her channel did begin to get some notice when she gave it more of a comedic feel. When she began to get recognized as "Colleen" instead of just "Miranda", she began to post every Friday to the PsychoSoprano channel. Her videos vary in content, and many of them are collaborations with other people including her ex-husband JoshuaDTV aka Joshua David Evans, her sister Rachel, and the international pop sensation Ariana Grande. Eventually, she began to do a weekly Q&A on her channel, which she calls "Colleen's Corner".
As of recently, viewers can submit their own jingle/intro for the beginning of each of her Tuesday Q&A's. More information on Colleen Evan's personal life can be found here: Miranda Sings. On December 25, 2014, Colleen created a second channel called Colleen Vlogs, a channel where Colleen posts her daily vlogs, her daily vlog channel is not as viewed as her Colleen Ballinger videos.
Nowadays “Colleen Ballinger” (her main channel) and “Miranda Sings” are no longer active.
==Acting==
Colleen appeared on the Nickelodeon show "Victorious" in 2012. In the episode, "Tori Goes Platinum", Colleen appeared as Miranda Sings, singing "Freak the Freak Out." This short cameo appeared when the character Mason was viewing video submissions, looking for the next person he would turn into a celebrity.
Colleen appeared on the "I Love the 2000's" series on VH1 in 2014.
Colleen also appeared on The View in January 2015.
Colleen appeared on Live with Kelly and Ryan in August of 2017.
Colleen appeared on the YouTube Premium show Escape The Night on the third and fourth seasons. Dying in S3 E5 nad S4E5 however was revived and escaped the night in S4.
In January 2016, she announced that Netflix picked up "Haters Back Off" for one season. On December 15th, 2016, Colleen announced that "Haters Back Off" was given a second season. On December 30th, 2017, Colleen uploaded a video to her main channel in which she talks about the cancellation of the show.
On October 5, 2018, Colleen announced that she would have a cameo, as Miranda Sings, in Disney's Wreck It Ralph 2: Ralph Breaks The Internet.https://news.disney.com/ralph-breaks-the-internet-casts-real-internet-stars
==Personal life==
On April 5, 2014, Colleen and fellow YouTuber Joshua Evans got engaged. On July 2, 2015, they both vlogged their wedding and it can be viewed on their respective YouTube channels. They were married in a quiet ceremony reserved for family and close friends. On September 30, 2016, the couple announced that they were getting divorced after a little over a year of marriage.
During filming of Haters Back Off she began dating her co-star Erik Stocklin. On June 29, 2018, they announced their engagement and that they are expecting their first child, a boy. The original due date was January 1, 2019. Colleen and Erik were married at some point in 2018. Colleen went into labor on December 10, 2018, and at 6:04 pm, their son, Flynn Timothy, was born. He weighed 7 pounds 9 ounces and measured 20 inches. The birth was filmed and can be viewed on her channel along with many pregnancy updates. On May 17, 2021, Colleen announced she was pregnant with her second child after previously suffering a miscarriage. On May 20, 2021, she announced that she was having twins. On July 14, 2021, she announced that she was having a boy and a girl. The twins, Wesley Koy and Maisy Joanne, were born at 32 weeks gestation on November 6, 2021.
==Miranda Sings==
 
Miranda Sings is a character created in 2008 by Colleen Ballinger. The character was "born on 24th December of 2000, (2000 years after Jesus) one day before Jesus", a quote from Selp-Helf, her book.
In Miranda's videos, the character sings, discusses current events that she often misunderstands, gives "tutorials" and rants about her critics, the "haters", or as Miranda calls them, hatresses. Miranda once had a second YouTube channel, mirandavlogz, which she later decided to stop using.
Colleen, Miranda's portrayer, has a YouTube channel of her own which is called Colleen Ballinger (formerly PsychoSoprano).
Miranda was created as a satire of the many bad but egotistical singers who believe that posting their videos on YouTube will lead to them breaking into show business, ignoring the realistic or cruel comments of "haters" regarding their videos.
When the character first began posting videos, much of the audience believed she was an actual person.
In 2009, in addition to her internet videos, Miranda regularly performed cabaret acts at cabaret spaces and theaters in New York, London, and other cities in the U.S., Canada, Australia and elsewhere.
Her acts include signature off-key singing of pop music hits, with introductions focusing on the her backstory and full of malapropisms and spoonerisms; the acts often incorporate giving a "voice lesson" to, and singing a duet with, Broadway or other musical celebrities, reading "hate mail", and singing while being stabbed through the neck in her "magic act". Miranda also appeared in a 2012 episode of the TV show Victorious. On April 7, 2014, the MirandaSings08 account hit 1,000,000 subscribers.
===YouTube videos===
"Miranda" is supposedly a home-schooled woman in her twenties who lives with her mother and uncle in Tacoma, Washington. She also supposedly lives with her father but she describes him as boring, so she doesn't talk about him.
On the videos, the Miranda character sings in a comically off-key, yet plausible, voice and covers show tunes and pop music hits, with introductions focusing on the her backstory. She uses spoonerisms and malapropisms, is ludicrously self-absorbed and has a sassy, arrogant attitude. The Times describes her as "self-obsessed and immune to criticism". She responds to viewers who take the videos seriously with the catchphrase, "Haters back off!", telling these critics that they are "just jealous" and that "haters make me famous".
She often displays facial traits such as unusually active eyebrows and a crooked smile. Her head is cocked to one side, and her pronunciation quirks include an emphasis on "m" and "b" sounds and the use of a prominent hard 'g' (in such words as 'singing' and 'song'). In place of lyrics that she cannot remember, she "scat" sings. She wears lipstick drawn beyond the borders of her lips, dresses in mismatched out-of-style clothing (such as a men's shirt buttoned to the neck with red sweatpants), and often dances stiffly to the music she is performing. Miranda's views of society and morality are politically incorrect, and she displays a strong aversion to anything risque, which she calls "porn".
===Cabaret===
Beginning in April 2009, in addition to her internet videos, Miranda Sings has also performed her cabaret acts at sold-out cabaret spaces and theatres in Atlanta, New York, London, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, and other cities in the U.S., as well as Dublin, cities in Australia, Canada, Norway and elsewhere. BroadwayWorld.com called her "the hottest, freshest and oddest breakout star in the musical theatre/cabaret scene".
In the cabaret acts, Miranda typically sings several songs from the musical theatre repertoire as well as some current popular songs in her signature off-key style; gives "voice lessons" or acting lessons to Broadway or West End stars, such as Sutton Foster, Andrew Rannells, and Shoshana Bean, to the Broadway casts of shows such as Billy Elliot (to which cast she also gave dance and acting "lessons") and Rock of Ages, and to pop stars such as Ariana Grande, in which she is hypercritical of the stars' performances, often telling them that they should leave show-business; signs one or more duets with established (and bemused) musical theatre singers, indignantly reads hate mail (bleeping out any profanity) that she has received on her YouTube channel and other social media; and sometimes improvises a song based on audience suggestions.
Sometimes an act has an autobiographical theme, in which Miranda tells her life story. In her holiday act, in addition to some of the above, Miranda has recreated the Christmas story "complete with the Three Kings, the Drummer Boy, and Santa Claus, as well as a shockingly dissonant 'Carol of the Bells'" and other Christmas songs.
Miranda has stated that she plans to perform the role of Elphaba in Wicked on Broadway. During 2009, she often stated that she planned to date Cheyenne Jackson (whom she does not realize is openly gay) or to find another boyfriend, but he must be talented and famous. She was photographed and videotaped together with Jackson at Broadway on Broadway 2009, confronting him about their "relationship", and finally receiving a "first kiss" from him.
In 2010, she stated in her videos and cabaret acts that Jackson is no longer her boyfriend (because he never called her for a date), and so she was seeking a new, famous, talented, handsome boyfriend, such as Zac Efron or Justin Bieber. In July 2013, Miranda began "dating" Amazing Race competitor and YouTube host Joey Graceffa, whose last name she cannot pronounce.
Miranda proclaimed that she is not just a "triple threat" entertainer, but a "four threat", because she is also a model. Since 2010, she has asserted that she is a "five threat" talent, adding "magic" to her list of skills, in videos and performances where she combines inept magic tricks with singing.
A regular part of her cabaret acts since then includes a magic trick where Miranda sings while appearing to be stabbed through the neck by a sword, sometimes by her magician "helper", Christopher Ballinger, claiming that she sings better when the sword is inserted through her neck. Miranda's May 2012 Birdland cabaret act was filmed by Seth Rudetsky and appears on his site www.SethTV.com.
As her popularity increased, Miranda has been able to book longer runs of her cabaret acts, at larger and larger venues, including a six-performance run in 2013 at the Leicester Square Theatre in London and seven sold out performances in Australia. A London reviewer commented:
"Miranda [is] hilarious, and I was struck on several occasions by what an accomplished creation the character is – with her own vocabulary, idiosyncrasies and bizarre (not to mention increasingly sinister) backstory, you've never seen anything like her, and the commitment with which Ballinger embodies this strange, strange girl is nothing short of admirable. Bridging both personas, the moment she transforms into Miranda, on-stage and mid-song, is an absolute joy – I'd struggle to recall hearing an audience erupt to such an extent, and I couldn't help but join in."
===Other activities===
In 2009, the cast of Mamma Mia! invited Miranda to perform with them at the 2009 Broadway Easter Bonnet competition. In December of that year, Miranda released a Christmas EP entitled "Christmas With Miranda Sings". In 2010, she appeared at the Nightlife Awards, and Miranda was a presenter at the CYT Directors' Choice Awards in La Mesa, California. Later that year, at the Rose Center Theater, Miranda co-hosted a benefit concert, "Broadway Memories" (which included the Sutton Foster "voice lesson"), for the Alzheimer's Association and the Capistrano Center for the Performing Arts. Also, from 2010 to 2012, Miranda also posted 86 video blogs to a second YouTube channel, Mirandavlogz, discussing various topics or giving tutorials, but ended up posting all of the videos on the Mirandasings08 channel. Miranda sings two tracks on the 2011 album Self Taught, Still Learning, by Chris Passey. She also appeared in a comedy film, Varla Jean and the Mushroomheads. In 2012, Miranda Sings was one of the headliners at the Out of the Loop Fringe Festival, presented by WaterTower Theater in Addison, Texas.
Miranda Sings appeared in a Season 3 episode of the television show Victorious, a one-hour special titled "Tori Goes Platinum", which was first broadcast on May 19, 2012 on the Nickelodeon channel. In the episode, Miranda is one of the auditionees for an awards show, singing "Freak the Freak Out”. In July 2012, Miranda gave a "master class" at the Boston Children's Theatre. She appeared in episode 6 of Dr. Fubalous, a 2012 web series that featured Miranda as nurse Royal Bobbin in a cast that included Danny Trejo and Flava Flav. She also appeared in the first episode of Dance Chat, an Australian web show, in 2013.
In August 2012, Miranda announced, in a YouTube vlog, that she was running for President of the U.S. to offer an alternative to the two candidates nominated by the major parties. She offered a brief analysis of the presidential race in the video. In an October vlog, she laid out her campaign platform.
===Genesis of the character===
Miranda's creator, Colleen Ballinger, based the character partly on young women that she knew in the performance department of her college, Azusa Pacific University. She told The Times of London, "There were a lot of cocky girls who thought they were really talented, and they weren't. They were so rude and snotty, it drove me nuts. Then I saw all these girls trying to make a career out of putting videos on YouTube ... clueless to the fact that they were terrible. The characters were so ridiculous, I wanted to make one of my own." At first, the "Miranda videos were meant to be an inside joke" among Ballinger's friends. Ballinger's YouTube channel received little traffic for more than a year; but in March 2009, she uploaded a video called "Free Voice Lesson" that quickly became a sensation. The video consists of advice to use, and demonstrations of, techniques that real voice teachers would warn students to avoid. As the videos on her channel became popular, Ballinger modified the character to draw negative comments on YouTube: "People would make fun of my hair, and I made it worse. ... I took what people hated and exaggerated it more in the next video. Since her first video, Miranda now has a far more exaggerated personality than before. In earlier videos, the character was far more disguised and easier to believe. But more recently, Miranda has become more obviously an act, exaggerating her singing voice, lipstick, etc., and by collaborating with several other YouTubers.
After Miranda videos first went viral, Ballinger was not sure what to do with her newfound internet fame. She arranged her own appearances and publicity for the first nine months but realized that she needed a professional manager. Ballinger notes, "I went from making a minute-and-a-half video in my bedroom to doing an hour-and-a-half live show". Ballinger's first live performance as Miranda took place in April 2009 when Jim Caruso invited her to perform as the character at Cast Party, a weekly show at Birdland jazz club in New York City. Members of the Broadway theatre community quickly became fans of the character and were eager to be a part of Miranda's cabaret acts, and Ballinger has made a living ever since by performing her cabaret acts in character as Miranda. An example of the Broadway community's embrace of the character is the composer Lin-Manuel Miranda's 2010 mock audition video with Miranda. In addition to cabaret performances, Ballinger has sometimes performed as the character at theatre venues, such as London's Leicester Square Theatre, where she taught "voice lessons" to, and performed with, London-based theatre stars, including Leanne Jones, Scarlett Strallen, Daniel Boys, Julie Atherton, Ian ‘H’ Watkins, Anna-Jane Casey, Jon Lee and Noel Sullivan. Since the summer of 2009, Miranda Sings has also been featured in radio and television interviews where the broadcasters play along with the character.
The Miranda character receives hate mail from viewers who are fooled by the character and believe that they are watching a serious video by a bad entertainer. Ballinger told Back Stage, "It's sort of like an Andy Kaufman thing. You wouldn't believe the hate mail. ... You would never say that stuff to someone's face, but you can type anything online." TheaterJones noted, "perhaps because the Internet is some crazy postmodern distortion of reality, people ... felt it was their duty to point out how woefully untalented [Miranda] was, in the most horrific ways. ... Her hate mail, which she reads some of on stage, is an art form all its own." These critics are so harsh that Miranda has become a "hero of the anti-bullying movement". The Times commented, "there is another, sweeter side to her travails. Miranda loves singing and, despite – or perhaps because of – the satire, becomes an evocation of something all humans love to do and have done since before we discovered language. The very act of singing, however dire the sound, makes us feel good." In 2010, Ballinger submitted an audition to the TV show Glee "in character" as Miranda. She noted that Glee is causing a resurgence of interest in singing in schools: "Everyone is talking about Glee and choirs and musical theatre, igniting a flame that has been dimmed for a long time. ... Live performance and musical theatre were almost a lost art ... people need to be reminded that it takes a lot more effort to sing than just watching movies or TV shows." Miranda agrees: "Since I became so famous ... everyone is watching more music and singing more – because everyone wants to be more like me." As the Miranda character has matured, its popularity has especially grown with younger audiences of the Glee generation, with most of those attending her concerts being teenagers or 20-somethings.
Ballinger told the Wall Street Journal that "I have to do things like torture myself to keep people watching" her YouTube videos. To this end, she took the cinnamon challenge in character as Miranda in February 2012 after hundreds of fans started asking her to take the challenge. Her video garnered 70,000 views after one week and later accumulated more than 1 million views.
===Reception===
Since early 2009, Ballinger's character has enjoyed widespread popularity, particularly among musical theatre fans. Her cabaret acts have been in demand at live clubs and theaters in New York (Birdland Jazz Club, Minskoff Theatre, The Town Hall,San Francisco (The Rrazz Room at Hotel Nikko), London (Ambassadors Theatre; Leicester Square Theatre), Australia (selling out every performance in her 2013 tour) and elsewhere, particularly at venues where her many teenage fans are admitted.
In 2009, the Los Angeles Times wrote of her videos, "this footage is a major hoot", and BroadwayWorld.com described Ballinger as an "Internet Superstar." The Times of London commented that although Miranda's videos have made her "a darling of the Broadway musical-theatre scene and an international cabaret star ... [it] is not online but on stage that Miranda truly comes to ghastly life." In 2010, the Broadway World review of Miranda's cabaret act in Los Angeles said: "Colleen Ballinger 'Miranda Sings' persona is a very unique and original concept devised by a very creative imagination. ... Miranda is not to be missed. [As] the old saying goes, it takes talent to be that bad”. TheaterJones similarly concluded: "Ballinger has hit on a character that reflects the zeitgeist of our time and does it with tongue firmly planted in cheek." Woman Around Town called Miranda "an atrocious, comedic masterpiece." A 2013 BroadwayWorld feature commented, "While [Miranda's] singing might not be anywhere near pitch-perfect, the character's comedic lampooning of self-aggrandizing divas surely is. Only a truly talented performer could make the Miranda character believable, let alone as endearing as she ends up being." AussieTheatre.com stated: "Miranda ... creates the most successful parody of the world of YouTube ... she has created an international cult following".
The Miranda videos have received a total of more than 80 million upload views, and the two Miranda channels, combined, have more than 5 million subscribers. Miranda Sings' parody cover of Taylor Swift's "Shake it Off" has received over 30 million views, her cover of Katy Perry's "California Gurls" video has received more than 3 million total views on YouTube, her parody of "Starships" has over 2.9 million views, her version of "Sexy and I Know It" has received more than 1.8 million hits, and six other videos on the Miranda channels have each received more than one million views. More than 40 of her videos have each received over 500,000 views, including her first viral video, "Free voice lesson". More than 200 of the videos on the Miranda channels have received over 100,000 hits. The character is widely parodied on YouTube, where a parody video has received over 5 million hits.
==Controversy==
===Pedophilia and grooming allegations===
Colleen has been accused of acting inappropriate towards her fans in past years while the fans were minors and she was an adult. This resurfaced in June 2023, Colleen was accused of inappropriate behavior with minors and grooming with some of her fans. Kodee, of the YouTube channel kodeerants, posted a videowhy I left the colleen ballinger fandom... detailing their experience with Colleen and provided screenshots of group chats that Colleen allegedly was a part of that included both adults and minors. One of the members of the group chats was another YouTuber, Adam McIntyre, who met Colleen when he was 13 and later posted two detailed videosi was right about colleen ballingermy relationship with colleen ballinger on his experience and relationship with Colleen mostly involving inappropriate behavior against him and others, such as sexually-motivated conversations, manipulative comments, and other inappropriate acts. He also stated that Colleen manipulated him into unpaid labor and engaged in gaslighting and bullying. Adam made these accusations against her as early as 2020 but was quickly squashed by her fanbase.https://www.sportskeeda.com/pop-culture/who-colleen-ballinger-popular-youtuber-fire-alleged-inappropriate-behavior-underage-fans
Considering the fact that she openly made sexual remarks towards a 13-year-old boy in a video, none of this should be surprising.
==== Conduct during live performances ====
Other accusations of inappropriate behavior towards fans come from her Miranda Sings live shows. A skit that took place during the Miranda Sings Summer Camp tour involved Colleen inviting young boys on stage to go on a pretend date with her in the woods, then asking the boy to reach down her pants to grab a cheese ball.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5GMvWzH2IY During one show, which her Netflix special was filmed, she told a young boy to "call me when you're older". Another skit that was deemed inappropriate and predatory was the "yoga challenge", where Colleen invited a minor girl on stage, spread her legs out, and played an inappropriate sound on the speaker.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZE8Zm60oShI Miranda Sings live shows also included references to "porn", with Colleen Ballinger inviting two girls on stage, one dressed as Miranda Sings, and one dressed in a revealing or skimpy outfit, and judging the girl in the skimpier outfit, effectively "slut-shaming" the girl.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aao1Fv9jZJo Twitter user @noitsbecks recalls feeling encouraged to dress up in a skimpy outfit for the "porn bit", and describes the use of minors in her show as "exploitive".https://twitter.com/noitsbecks/status/1667320682017955840?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1667320682017955840%7Ctwgr%5Eecdb6606ee3b587c5942ce1c377cd9263de8fbed%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fcentennialworld.com%2Fnoitsbecks-miranda-sings-fart-stunt-yoga-challenge-becky-colleen-ballinger-violating-minor-fan%2F
====Jojo Siwa comments====
In a resurfaced video, Colleen has been shown to act and talk inappropriately in her video with Jojo Siwa.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHbGSHAbPfQ She makes several disturbing comments to Jojo during the four minute video. The video was published to her main channel on October 10, 2016. At the time of the video, Jojo was in between the ages of 13 and 14. As of July 2023, the video has over 38 million views. Commenting has been turned off for the video. 
=====Jojo defends Colleen=====
On September 13th, 2023, Jojo had sparked outrage when she accused the internet of lying about Colleen grooming her fans and claimed that she was the nicest person she'd ever met.https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/jojo-siwa-colleen-ballinger-grooming-allegations-b2411756.html This caused her to receive backlash, as she was defending an accused child groomer.
====Second Response and Return====
On November 18th, following a 4 month long pause in uploads, Colleen posted again on her vlogs channel.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y68rdlC0bls The video gained some backlash for failing to clear up the allegations raised against Colleen, with the latter only saying she was accused of it, rather than any actual apology or accountability. Some theorize that Colleen returned because it was a profitable time of year for vlog YouTubers, with the holidays drawing closer at the time of the upload. Much like the original response, the comments appear to be heavily doctored, with all comments expressing positivity and showing support for Colleen.
After this was posted, Colleen resumed her daily posting, with the comments also heavily filtered.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6r51MpQH3A
Colleen further acknowledged the rumors in a vlog called "My Big Audition!", which she uploaded on January 10th, 2024, claiming that she had landed a major role on Broadway, but lost the role due to the stories that came out about her, calling the stories "completely made up."https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xPRxUghF7Q
==Channel milestones==
===Subscriber milestones===
====Colleen Ballinger====
====Miranda Sings====
==Notes==
==References==
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