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The singer who hid a beautiful new song in her YouTube videos

It feels like I've been rickrolled (but in a good way).

Jackson Ryan Former Science Editor
Jackson Ryan was CNET's science editor, and a multiple award-winning one at that. Earlier, he'd been a scientist, but he realized he wasn't very happy sitting at a lab bench all day. Science writing, he realized, was the best job in the world -- it let him tell stories about space, the planet, climate change and the people working at the frontiers of human knowledge. He also owns a lot of ugly Christmas sweaters.
Jackson Ryan
2 min read
doddleoddle
YouTube/doddleoddle

YouTuber and musician, Dorothy "Dodie" Clark, just pulled off an almighty, super wholesome YouTube heist that will blow your mind.

Dodie, who goes by the moniker "doddleoddle" on YouTube is an English singer and songwriter. Over the last nine months, she uploaded a number of videos that seemed like the standard YouTube fair: vlogs, songs, chatting to her subscribers, fairy lights and general fun shenanigans. But underneath it all, Dodie had hatched a plan.

"I've uploaded some videos but in each one are several hidden lyrics of a song I've written", she explains at the beginning of her latest video, posted on Jan. 22

Dodie explains that in her previous uploaded videos she had been slipping lyrics -- sung in the right key, no less -- into her vlogs in a clandestine operation to "build a song scrapbook-style". At the end of her secret nine month stunt, Dodie says she "made a baby of sorts". 

The song that she had hidden within was her new single "Arms Unfolding", which she says was inspired by friends learning to love again, which resonated with how she was feeling about YouTube at the time. It's all very wholesome and sweet.

You can watch -- and listen to -- Dodie's video below:

The "hidden message in online social media" viral trend isn't all that new, but it is always impressive. On August 24, 2018, Twitter user @CostcoRiceBag revealed they had been secretly tweeting the lyrics to Bohemian Rhapsody using the first word of their tweets over a matter of months. Because Mart had tweeted the words in reverse, users could "sing" Bohemian Rhapsody by scrolling through her feed.

It also brings to mind the epic five year wait for the Twitter account based on Rocky Horror Picture Show's Frank N Furter to complete the word "anticipation", and, for me that one time that I tweeted the lyrics to Jay-Z's "99 Problems" for its tenth anniversary.

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