Malinda Kathleen Reese

**Malinda Kathleen Reese**, who is also known as simply **MALINDA**, is an American musician, songwriter, YouTuber, comedian and actor, who is most likely known for her Google Translate Sings series. She was born on June 27th, 1994 Washington DC. As of November 2019, she's lived in New York City, New York.

## Early Life

Malinda was born in Washington D. C. and grew up on the local theater scene. Her family is formed of her mother Mary Hall Surface, who is a director, playwright, and teacher, her father is Kevin Reese, who has acted in productions from Arena Stage to the Kennedy Center. She is an only child.

Malinda spent her youth wandering backstage and playing in costume shops. She was soon performing herself, and by age 14 she was attending the Interlochen Arts Camp in Michigan and the Broadway Artists Alliance in New York City. Apart from acting, Malinda also enjoyed writing and singing, producing "Dreams Come True" in 2018, a song she wrote when she was 9 years old.

## Career

Malinda created her YouTube channel in 2010, but only started posting videos in 2012. Her first videos were some of her old performances at Sidwell Friends School.

It was at Vassar, where she switched into the theater program, that she listened to a version of "Let It Go" from the Disney movie *Frozen* sung by 25 women in 25 languages. She noticed that the Spanish translation wasn’t quite literal, and she wondered how it would sound if she put it back into English using Google Translate. The results were funny, so she started doing it in other languages. She assembled all the mistranslations into a song that she could sing. In February of 2014, she posted a video of Let It Go from Frozen according to Google Translate, that video becoming her most popular video up to date, which was the beginning of her series Google Translate Sings and her comedian career, that still continues to this day. Over the years, she's worked with many popular YouTubers and singers such as Jonathan Young, Caleb Hyles, Jared Halley, Evynne Hollens and many more. On August 21st, 2018, Malinda opened her music channel, MALINDA, and announced her debut EP *Love Letter*, which was officially released on September 14th of the same year.

In late 2018, Malinda posted a video of her singing "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" in a church during her trip to Spain. The video quickly went viral and it appeared in many Spanish news and websites.

In March of 2018, Malinda auditioned for a role in the musical *ONCE* hosted by Olney Theatre Center. In January of 2019, she confirmed that she got the role in the musical. The musical was performed live several times in Broadway shows.

Malinda released two singles on April 19th and May 24th, titled "unavailable"and "a song about nothing". Later, on July 19th, she re-released a song from September 2018 called "Music Box". Her single "Don't Make Me" was released on October 11th, 2019. The music video for the song was premiered at Buffer Festival on October 3rd, which featured Thomas Sanders. As of December 2019, she has gained over 700k streams on Spotify.

### Twisted Translations

Her main channel, Twisted Translations, revolves of comedy videos. Until August 21st, 2018, the channel was also meant for Malinda's songs and covers. On this channel, she uploads her Google Translate Sings series, as well as other comedy videos.

### MALINDA

Her second channel, MALINDA, was created on March 1st, 2012, but has only started being active on August 21st, and it is currently for her music, musical projects and personal subjects, for example her videos titled "I don't want to be extraordinary", and "I didn't look in a mirror for 5 days", that video being her most popular video on this channel, at one million views.

### Malinda Kathleen Reese

Her third and final channel, Malinda Kathleen Reese, used to be a vlogging channel, however, the channel is inactive, videos not being posted for nearly two years.

## Discography

*To see Malinda's discography, see the following pages:*

* Malinda Kathleen Reese/Discography
* List of covers

## Trivia

* She has a dog pet named Selanna.
* She appeared in many videos on the Fine Brothers Entertainment YouTube channel.
* During her college years, she was part of an acapella group called The Vastards.
* She has an official website.
* On Spotify, she was known as both MALINDA and Malinda Kathleen Reese. She released songs under Malinda Kathleen Reese from 2015 until mid-2018. After opening her music channel, she started releasing under MALINDA. The two artist pages were later merged in December of 2019.

## References

1. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTYaMLMywyk
2. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/user/malineka146/about
3. ↑ https://twitter.com/missmalindakat/status/1040575314387197952
4. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlNBnzyiomU
5. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DRyrKPFRgo
6. ↑ https://www.facebook.com/malindakathleenreese/photos/a.301897063295300/1229708990514098/
7. ↑ https://www.washingtonpost.com/goingoutguide/theater-dance/a-locally-grown-youtube-star-returns-to-the-stage-in-olneys-once/2019/02/06/92c11e20-258a-11e9-ad53-824486280311\_story.html
8. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo9xgcWj-3w
9. ↑ https://www.instagram.com/p/B5s858znEOq/
10. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP2-S6-M9ZvlY8t7cRn4O6A
11. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/user/missmalindakathleen
12. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/user/missmalindakathleen/about
13. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ey7YSaJzsuU
14. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIOK1una0nM
15. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/user/the20sprojectmkr
16. ↑ https://www.malindakathleenreese.com/
17. ↑ https://open.spotify.com/artist/4gKo3LXoxHriLS6CBKThAU
18. ↑ https://open.spotify.com/artist/6MqxdQz3XTtHmnGRq3PguW