Bonnie Ryan has revealed that she’s given up on her dream of making it as a pop star.
The 25-year-old make up artist has gained a big following on social media, and is a rising star in the Irish influencer market.
However, before she pursued her career in the beauty industry, Bonnie tried to make it in the music, and even released her own single in 2016.
Looking back, Bonnie told the Herald, “[Singing] is unbelievably tough. I had been in a band since the age of eight, and then I went solo at 15. I was working at it so hard.”
“I had been over and back to London, I’d been in Sweden, I put out a song. It is just the most difficult thing and I kind of just got to a point where I almost loved it too much to keep dragging it out.”
“I’d rather just do it myself and not have this pressure of having it as my career. I love to sing, so I can sing in my spare time, I can always do it.
“It is such a tough career and I just decided it was time for me to do something I really enjoyed.”
She continued, “It was a bit of a complicated time. I was in that moment, which I think a lot of people are when they’re that age – at the time I was 23 or 24 – and you’re kind of going, ‘what do I actually want to do with my life?'”
“It was a bit of a scary time. I was trying to think of things that I wanted to do and everyone was like, ‘it is so obvious – you love makeup, you do it all the time’.”
When she started getting serious about social media and being an ‘influencer’, Bonnie tried not to compare herself to her late father Gerry Ryan, and her RTÉ star sister Lottie.
“I am really shy when I first meet people. It is only people who know me really well who know I am quite outgoing, crazy and chatty,” she said.
“So doing my social media, I was like ‘I am not Lottie and I am not my dad’. It didn’t necessarily come completely easy to me.”
“I was kind of like, I have to work on it every day and make a really conscious decision when I go on social media.
“I didn’t want it to seem like I was trying to be like anybody else or be anyone else who is on social media.
“I really wanted to show my own personality and so I told myself to act as if I am talking to my friends and try and just be myself,” she added.
