‘You Do Not Need Fancy Equipment, You Do Not Need a Degree, to Make Money and to Do This as Your Job’

22-year-old pop singer-songwriter Brye, on TikTok:

“Lemons”, my biggest song ever, that went like super viral during quarantine back in 2020, was actually produced, if you can believe it, in GarageBand on my school iPad.

My high school gave us all iPads and I produced “Lemons” on there. I used to just like make beats on GarageBand in high school. I wrote musicals for my school with GarageBand on my iPad. And then I made that little demo for “Lemons”, recorded it ... on my iPad ... with my horrible little plug-in mic, posted it to spite a guy who was being horrible to me, and it blew up.

I love this, to say, how crazy is it that a song that could be on Sirius XM radio — streamed a hundred million times, literally charted on the global top like viral 50 or whatever — it was literally made on GarageBand. You do not need fancy equipment, you do not need a degree, to make money and to do this as your job.

Obviously it’s good to learn. It’s fun to upgrade. But if you are working on a budget, GarageBand’s free on any Apple device.

If Brye’s story isn’t exactly what Steve Jobs was talking about when he introduced GarageBand in 2004 and GarageBand for iPad in 2011, well, I don’t know what is. Right down to the fact that she did on school equipment. Her enthusiasm for the simplicity of the kit she used to record “Lemons” is contagious.

John Ternus (or whatshisname ... Tim Cook) should send this video to every single employee at Apple and tell them that this — this — is exactly Apple’s mission. To empower creative people to create great new things they didn’t believe were possible with the tools already in their hands.

★ Wednesday, 20 May 2026