Ariana Grande shared Raven's video

“It’s just very surreal,” says Hrafnhildur Magnea Ingólfsdóttir, but the pop star Ariana Grande shared a video of her singing the song We Can’t Be Friends on her Instagram account.

Ingólfsdóttir, who goes by the artist name Raven, posted a video of herself singing Ariana’s song to various daily activities on her TikTok account. The video got a considerable amount of attention, and Raven received 23,000 followers on TikTok as a result.

“It just takes off there some days after and becomes to some extent ‘viral’,” Raven tells mbl.is.

Shared the video in her story on Instagram

Raven said she later shared the same video on Instagram, but yesterday morning she saw that the idol herself shared the video in her story on Instagram.

“She occasionally publishes something about her fans who are doing something about her songs, and I can see that she has published my video and written ‘fabulous’ to it,” Raven says.
“It’s just incredible that someone I’ve been looking up to for years and watched all that time knows I exist and have heard my voice,” she says.

“It was very spontaneous”

When asked, Hrafnhildur said she has been singing since she could remember. She has since won the Icelandic Secondary Schools Song Contest with the band Náttsól in 2016, with actress Elín Hall and musician Guðrún Ólafsdóttir, also known as ЯÚN.

She released her first EP under the name RAVEN in 2021 and has since released several songs, including Right? and Handan við hafið (Beyond the Sea) in 2023.

The video that got all this attention on TikTok was, however, not planned at all, according to Raven, so she was a little surprised that it became so popular.

“It was very spontaneous compared to other covers I’ve taken,” she says.

Didn’t plan to publish the video at first

“I had this idea in my head because I’ve seen this done before, where people have a song on their brains and record it as they’re singing it in the activities of their daily lives. I really didn’t mean to post this.”

She says that she has gained a lot of followers because of the video and received messages afterwards. Her friends and family are extremely excited for her and Raven tells her parents, who are not themselves on TikTok, that they keep asking her how many views she has.
“My friend told me yesterday: Imagine how small the world has become when one of the biggest pop stars in the world has seen a video of you.”

She says it’s hard to tell what’s next, but her brother has encouraged her to continue making videos, an advice she plans to take to heart.

“It’s a question of what’s going to happen, I don’t know what to post next.”