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Emma Young: 21-Year-Old Hospice Nurse Goes Viral For Her Awesome Cover Of Adele’s ‘Make You Feel My Love’

By Nathan Francis
Published on: 06:45 PST, Jul 26, 2016

Emma Young wasn’t envisioning viral fame when she sat down at a piano inside the hospice where she works, but that’s exactly where the 21-year-old nurse ended up after her rousing rendition of Adele’s “Make You Feel My Love.”

Young works at the St. Helena Hospice in Colchester, a town in Essex, England, and she sometimes plays tunes on the piano inside the inpatient unit. While she may be used to playing for just a few people, her audience grew significantly on Friday when a video of Young’s cover of Adele was uploaded to the hospice’s Facebook page.

It went viral almost immediately, garnering thousands of shares and close to 100,000 views.

Singing is nothing new to Emma, who said she had loved music since the age of five. Emma added that her mother always praised her singing voice, but the 21-year-old decided to focus on her studies and never considered a path into music.

The attention of this week’s viral video came as a shock to Emma Young.

“There is a piano there and I do like to sing when I can but on Friday someone from the fundraising team who are usually based in another building were there and asked if I was OK with being filmed,” Young told the Clacton Gazette.

“The patients are always saying ‘come on Emma, give us a song’ so my colleagues have all heard it before. I thank everyone who has shared it and shown support towards myself and St Helena Hospice.”

While Emma may be overwhelmed by the attention she found, the young nurse said she was also happy that so many people were able to learn about St. Helena Hospice and the work they do.

It is her love of the work and her compassion for the patients there that brings Emma to the piano in the first place.

“I love my job here and I am hoping to do my fully nursing training and if I can carry on with my music for the patients then I will,” she told the Clacton Gazette. “I know just for a moment it helps them to just forget what they are going through.”

The viral video also underscores the importance of music for hospital patients, CNN noted. A report on Emma Young’s viral video cited a meta-analysis of 400 studies published in Trends in Cognitive Science that showed music was a powerful tool for people dealing with terminal illnesses.

Patients at St. Helena Hospice have seen that firsthand, and Emma’s songs have become quite popular with them.

“It’s very uplifting and it really brightened up my afternoon. She plays beautifully and sings beautifully,” St. Helena Hospice patient Sharon Jack told CNN.

Emma Young is not the first British singer to go from obscurity to stardom thanks to a viral video. Back in 2014, a college student named Kelvin Jones found instant fame after a user on Reddit posted a link to the YouTube video for the song, “Call You Home.”

The link attracted hundreds of thousands of views, helping to give Jones the momentum to launch his career.

“I really want to get an album out but I’m not signed on to a label so it’s pretty tough to get in a recording studio,” he wrote in an AMA (Ask Me Anything) session held on Reddit. “I’m only learning how to record and mix music as I go so if I did it myself I’d probably hate how it sounded upon looking back in a few months (which is why I’m hesitant to release an album by myself).”

It’s not clear if Emma Young plans to parlay the attention from her viral video into a singing career as well, but she seems to be enjoying her moment of fame.

[Image via Facebook/St. Helena Hospice]

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