Kristina Rybalchenko, the drummer who rocks social media

Cover videos are a fundamental part of the history of the internet. After the arrival of YouTube in 2005, the platform was quickly flooded with musicians delivering versions of their favorite artists’ songs in the hopes of making an impact and, with any luck, going viral. But Kristina Rybalchenko uploaded her first video playing the drums merely as a “fun experiment.” “We recorded in a nightclub when I was 15 years old. I wanted to play a song on the drums and I asked my dad to help organize everything, because one of his friends was the club’s owner,” says Rybalchenko, who is now 28 and has 1.4 million followers (including fellow percussionists Raja Meissner and Nandi Bushnell).

“I totally blame my parents,” when it comes to her relationship with rock, jokes the content creator. In her hometown of Khabarovsk in eastern Russia, Rybalchenko grew up “surrounded by music,” which is clear from her parents’ VHS recordings, in which she appears as a young girl, moving to the beat of Metallica. “I often say that they put me on the right path from an early age,” she says from her apartment in Los Angeles, where she moved at the beginning of this year.

Metallica was not just her favorite group when she was young. In addition to being the first band she saw live, it is the one whose songs she has covered the most and that has led to the most reactions from her followers across different platforms. Though she began with the U.S. group, later on, Rybalchenko got interested in “heavier” music and started to get into bands like Slipknot, System of a Down, and Bring Me the Horizon, whose drummer Matt Nicholls has been one of her greatest influences. Her preference for this kind of sound led Rybalchenko to become interested in the drums as a teen, after having played the xylophone and the vibraphone for a few years. “I kept discovering more bands that made my jaw drop and from then on, my obsession with rock and metal really took off. It was just a matter of time before I sat behind a drum kit,” she says.

When she was 18, she finished music school in Khabarovsk. It was then that Rybalchenko turned her focus to the drums, and started playing with her first group. During the same time period, she first saw the videos of Australian drummer and YouTuber Nic Pettersen, and was “delighted”: “It was Pettersen and Matt McGuire [the drummer from The Chainsmokers] who inspired me to start my own YouTube channel”.

In the decade that followed, the way that online videos are distributed has changed radically. Today, the classic YouTube format no longer reigns supreme, but rather short, vertically oriented videos. However, in this new ecosystem, covers have survived and continue to be a trustworthy formula for virality. When it comes to the drums, Rybalchenko is not alone. There are other social media stars like Faith Benson and Domino Santantonio, who also have hundreds of thousands of followers who are hooked on their covers.

In Rybalchenko’s case, becoming a full-time musical content creator was a gradual transition. “At first, I was just having fun playing music and uploading videos. But as my audience grew, I began to realize that it could actually become something much bigger,” she remembers. Though she has uploaded dozens of covers to the internet during her years as a content creator, she says her favorite songs include Metallica’s Master of Puppets, System of a Down’s Toxicity and Foo Fighters’ The Pretender.

These are songs that, in Rybalchenko’s assessment, “have it all,” combining “intensity, energy and rhythm.” “There’s the challenge and the frustration of when you get overwhelmed, and then the moment that you get it. I feel a mix of emotion, fatigue and a huge sense of achievement when I finally manage to play a difficult part after hours of practice,” she explains.

In addition to performing songs, Rybalchenko records and edits all her own videos. The only part she entrusts to other people is the audio mixing. The content creator had already been putting time and effort into her videos for years when what she calls the “inflection point” took place: when her videos started attracting collaborations with brands, sponsors and even, finally, the possibility of living from her music. “I remember getting excited when I saw my first videos reach a few hundred views, and definitely didn’t think that some day, millions of people would see my content. It’s still crazy to me how far all this has gone,” says the drummer, who confesses that she still feels “a mix of emotion and incredulity” when her content reaches another milestone.

Rybalchenko finds it funny to compare her first drum kit — which she bought for $100 and had a sticker with an image of a semi-nude woman — with the “dreamy instrument” she has now: a Gretsch Drums brand kit that she plays with her own model of Meinl brand drumsticks, which she put out with the company three years ago.

Today, she divides her creative efforts between Instagram, TikTok, Twitch and YouTube. She thinks that each platform “has its own dynamic,” despite the fact that short videos dominate on all of them. “In reality, short videos sometimes make everything easier. I can record three videos of different parts of the same song. That way, I maintain variety and present attractive and dynamic content,” she says.

Her success on social media also has a dark side: the sexist and derogatory comments that are occasionally posted on videos. Rybalchenko says they’re “frustrating, of course,” but that little by little, she’s learned ways for them not to affect her. “You can almost always find comments about my clothes on videos where I’m literally wearing an everyday t-shirt and shorts,” says the drummer, who says such behavior comes from “people who use the internet to get rid of their negative energy, in the hopes of feeling better about themselves.” She says she prefers to use her energy toward focusing on the work and on her followers’ “positive feedback.”

These days, Rybalchenko is focused on her new life in Los Angeles, where she’s been able to make strides in her musical content. She says she’s “very excited by this new era”, and considers the move to the Californian city, after stops in Tbilisi and Belgrade, “the natural evolution” in her trajectory, personal as well as professional. “People often ask me why I moved to Los Angeles and honestly, I don’t have an exact answer; I just feel like this city is the place for me. It’s the biggest center of music and creativity, and it’s inspirational for me to be surrounded by so many opportunities and talented people,” she concludes.

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