Fulton Lee has been releasing music since 2016, but it wasn’t until he posted a short video on social media in 2023 promoting his song “Alright” that he became a viral sensation. In it, Lee stands on a street corner holding a handwritten sign that says, “Stand here if you had a bad day,” with a white circle drawn on the pavement in front of him. A woman stops and stands in the designated area. Lee then pulls out an electric guitar and starts serenading her. After his performance, she tells him, “You have no idea how much I needed to hear that today, thank you,” before giving him a hug. Within a month of posting the video, it garnered more than 8 million views on Facebook and 6.3 million views on Instagram.
Since then, he’s posted other “on-the-street” content, as he calls it, holding signs that say, “Vibe with me,” “Press button for the funk,” and “Play the blue keys,” inviting strangers to accompany him in performing his songs, which has made him—and many of his collaborators—social media stars.
Lee started his music career in Virginia as a teen, playing in his father’s classic rock cover band, then moved to Nashville in 2016 to forge his own path in the industry. There, the self-proclaimed “indie-pop-soul” artist gained a local following after winning a music competition in 2020. The prize was a performance slot in the city’s free Live on the Green outdoor music festival.
While in Nashville, Lee worked with producers on his music but he found it to be a slow process. In 2022, shifting to his signature “bubblegum funk” sound—a fusion of upbeat retro soul, pop, and funk—he began working on his debut album, Sonny Boy, It was around this time that Lee, who had learned to produce his own music, began delving into short-form video, releasing songs off his album on social media.
“That was when I started to do a song every week or a song every two weeks,” Lee says over a video call from his home in Richmond, Virginia. “Since then everything has been self-produced, self mixed. I do have a co-producer, one of my best friends, that works with me on every song. It’s all in-house, which is really what allows me to release so often.”
Over his career, Lee has released a plethora of singles and four albums, including two in 2025, Go Getter and Sit Here If You Can Sing, a collection of the songs he’s performed with strangers on social media; all of which, of course, he credits on the record, helping them gain exposure for their musical talents.
While prepping for his North American tour starting in May, Lee talks to me about the challenges of being a self-produced indie musician, the music that inspired his sound, and how, with the help of random strangers, he’s watched his music career flourish.
What inspired you to become a musician?
I always knew I wanted to be an entertainer. I remember when people would ask me what I want to be when I grow up, I would say, “Well, I either want to be on “Saturday Night Live,” or I want to be a rock star. But then my dad was in a classic rock cover band when I was in middle school, and he taught me guitar, and then I became the rhythm guitar player in his band. And we would play bars and weddings and different things. I then became the lead singer and the lead guitar player when I got better at it. So, I got a ton of performance experience at 14, 15 years old, doing that. Pretty much from the time that I started obsessing over a guitar, I knew that I wanted to do this for life.
What kind of music influenced you growing up?
Well, it’s funny, I feel like from about 16 to maybe 19, I had this window where I consumed a massive amount of music. And I remember my sister, who’s eight years older than me, had downloaded hundreds and hundreds of songs that she curated onto my iPod. I really started to gravitate towards more soulful records: Aretha Franklin, Sly and the Family Stone, Otis Redding, and then Lake Street Dive. Shakey Graves was a huge thing for me around that age. So I got super into the kind of gospel-influenced Motown sound. But then I also had a real love for Radiohead. And Iron and Wine was a big lyrical influence for me. So yeah, it was across the spectrum a little bit. But I had a particular fondness for that soul music.
You have this ever-increasing following on social media, thanks in part to your collaborations with random people. What prompted that idea?
I was writing music and releasing music, and I was Fulton Lee. And I was just pursuing that for four or five years before I really tried out short-form video content at all. And I spent about a year and a half really diving into short form. And I tried lots of different formats of videos. Like I would do the skit videos where I am pretending to be the producer, and then I am also the artist that walks into the studio, and I’m acting with myself. And then, at one point, I collaborated with a friend, and we brainstormed ideas, and we came up with this idea for me to go and hold a sign out on the street. And I had really no expectation for it. For my song called “Loose,” that came out a few years ago, I had a sign that just said, “Get loose with me.” And that video really was just designed to promote my song. And I thought if I can just weasel my song in there, maybe people will like the music along the way. And that video took off. And so I was like, okay, great. Now I’ll try and replicate this. And so I just started to come up with all these different variations on how I can hold a sign on the street and incorporate my songs. But it wasn’t until this year that I did “Sit here if you can sing,” where I collaborated musically with somebody. And that has been one of the most successful iterations of the whole sign format.
And it’s totally an unintended side effect that these extremely talented people are now getting a bunch of eyeballs on them. It’s definitely been one of the most musically fulfilling things for me to have this on-the-spot, real-time, little creation that happens with talented people. So yeah, it’s just a big win-win.
Do you keep in touch with any of your musical guests? Have any of them found fame from their impromptu performances?
Oh, yeah, I’ve had lengthy conversations about it. Probably the most successful episode was with a woman named Karen Linette, who sat down with me and, towards the end of our little song together, just went on this improvised huge, belting thing. It was so awesome. That video did so well, and the people who viewed that video were so in love with Karen, and captured, not just by her voice, but by her personality. She gives this big belly laugh at the end of the video, and she’s such a warm, joyful, charismatic person, and that really came through in the video. And so people fell in love with her. It did so well that she came to my house, and we wrote and recorded a whole second song together.
Oh, wow! That’s really cool.
Yeah, we documented the process of writing it, and there’s a video of us in the studio together writing it that’s out, and that second song is out. I think these little relationships and collaborations will probably continue to develop in ways that maybe I don’t know about yet. We’re going on tour, and I’m surely gonna have these guests at different stops. It’s a bummer. Every time I do one of these videos, I wish that I could pause time and make a whole album with this person, because I have so much fun with them.
When you write songs, are there particular themes that you write about that recur throughout your music?
Yeah, definitely. It’s most of the time not intentional. It’s more something that I notice as I look at my catalog. I tend to write a lot about themes involving hope and acknowledging struggle. I also write a lot about the passing of time. I think I’m just trying to grapple with my own understanding of my parents getting older, my kids getting older, and my own body getting older. And it comes through even in my really happy, upbeat pop songs.
A lot of times, those are the best kinds of songs.
Totally. Yeah, emotionally complex.
What surprised you most about navigating the music industry?
I was really walking into it with complete green newness around 2015 to 2019. And at that time, it was still pretty much the traditional artist pathway to success. If you were to try and learn about how to navigate the music industry, it was managers, publishers, labels, lawyers, and blogs. Those were the avenues you took to get exposure when you’re starting from zero. And I was like, okay, cool. That’s how you do it. I guess I’ll just try all that stuff. And I never really had success. And then, around 2019, 2020, is when I discovered the phenomenon of TikTok and [Facebook] Reels. I guess that’s what surprised me was when that happened, I was like, oh, okay, there are no rules anymore. There are no gatekeepers. I don’t need anyone with access on my team in order to open doors for me. I just need to provide quality to the algorithm, and it will just find my audience for me. It was great because that really put the control in my hands. I didn’t have an interest in video at the time. I had no interest in social media. But this is the game you have to play in order to win. And so I’ll just learn this game.
What do you have coming up?
I have an album called Sit Here If You Can Sing. And it’s all the songs with all the different singers that sat down with me. I don’t have a team, really. I have an agent, but I don’t have a manager or a label. I just get to decide which direction the rudder of the ship is gonna move. And then the past two months, I’ve been venturing into new iterations of my same kind of on-the-street content. I am planning a season 2 of Sit Here If You Can Sing. Maybe I’ll do another eight episodes and put it into another album. I’m not sure yet. But I know I’m gonna at least do the concept again and probably do another full series of it in probably the spring, leading up to the tour. So yeah, that’ll be exciting. But my typical rhythm is, I release a new song every two weeks, and each song has one of these on-the-street videos that is paired with it. Most of the time, I find ways to, even if I’m not working with a singer, to incorporate some kind of sound or audio from the shoot and put it in the song, whether that’s just somebody that walked up to me saying hello into the mic, I’ll incorporate that into the song. So they are meant to be married. So yeah, every two weeks, those are just gonna keep coming out, hopefully indefinitely.
As an independent artist, does this process ever get overwhelming for you?
Yeah. And you put perfect words to it, which is that there is an endless amount of options in terms of which direction I can move next. And I am the only one who is gonna decide. It’s a ton of pressure because those decisions have massive ripple effects on the trajectory of my career into the indefinite future. So yeah, it’s a blessing and a curse. I genuinely wouldn’t have it any other way.
Fulton Lee is gearing up for his North American tour starting in May.
Leave a comment