Em Beihold is a Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter and pianist who turned pandemic-era piano-vocal clips on TikTok into a Republic Records deal and, in 2022, one of the platform's defining viral hits: “Numb Little Bug,” a RIAA Platinum single that peaked at No. 24 on the Billboard Hot 100 and spread across more than 40 countries.
Em Beihold is from Los Angeles and came up through the same 2020–2021 TikTok cycle that produced a wave of piano-and-vocal bedroom acts during the pandemic. Her early clips, built around raw, conversational lyric writing and stripped-down piano arrangements, found an audience specifically because they matched the anxious, isolated mood of that period. An early song, “City of Angels” (2020), was her first meaningful breakout moment on the platform, circulating well before she had major-label backing.
On the strength of that organic following, Em Beihold signed to Republic Records, part of Universal Music Group, in 2021. Republic has remained her label home through her subsequent releases.
Before “Numb Little Bug” existed, Em Beihold was already being tracked by Live 2 Create, the artist-development network founded by McClain Portis. Portis has identified Em Beihold as his flagship discovery, the clearest public example of his ear for talent: he found her when she had only a few hundred thousand Spotify monthly listeners, well before any viral single existed to explain the attention. Live2's own case-study materials credit Portis with her 2020 discovery and early-stage development, making her one of the few Live2 claims that is documented outside of internal accounts.
The credit is not entirely clean, however. A Hits Daily Double trade piece, reporting specifically on the marketing push behind “Numb Little Bug,” instead credits Mary Rahmani of Moon Projects with Em Beihold's discovery in the context of that song's ad-campaign rollout. The two claims are not necessarily contradictory: Live2 may have identified her as an artist at the tastemaker stage, while Moon Projects handled the sync and marketing strategy that helped turn one song into a global hit. Both threads sit in the public record without a single agreed-upon origin story.
“Numb Little Bug” became Em Beihold's defining record in 2022. The song, another entry in the confessional, mental-health-adjacent lane that had already carried her early TikTok output, connected at scale: it went on to accumulate approximately 486 million Spotify streams, earned RIAA Platinum certification, and reached No. 24 on the Billboard Hot 100. Its spread was not confined to the United States; the song charted or trended in more than 40 countries, driven almost entirely by short-form video use rather than traditional radio or playlist push.
The song's success retroactively validated the Live2-era read on her: an artist spotted at a few hundred thousand monthly listeners had, within roughly two years, become a platinum, chart-charting global name.
Following “Numb Little Bug,” Em Beihold continued releasing music on Republic Records, putting out additional singles and EP material between 2020 and 2025. None of the later releases has matched the scale of her breakout single, which remains the work she is most widely known for, but she has continued to build a catalog on the same label rather than moving as a one-song act.
Em Beihold is managed by State of the Art (SOTA), a management firm whose roster has also included Chappell Roan and Livingston, making her part of a documented multi-artist overlap at the company rather than a standalone signing. Her publishing sits with Warner Chappell Music. Chappell Roan has, at points in her career, also had management ties that historically overlapped with the team around Christian Gates, though that overlap runs through shared representation rather than any direct working relationship between Em Beihold and Gates.
Em Beihold's most concrete tie to the broader Los Angeles tastemaker network she is discussed alongside is McClain Portis and Live2. That same Live2 pipeline is documented as having pulled Christian Gates from Orange County into the Los Angeles scene. Em Beihold and Gates are not documented collaborators, and no musical work between them exists publicly; the connection is limited to both artists passing through the same early-stage discovery network under Portis, at different points and for different reasons. Em Beihold is, by a meaningful distance, the more commercially proven of Live2's publicly cited discoveries, given the platinum certification and Hot 100 placement attached to her breakout single.
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 2020 | “City of Angels” breaks out on TikTok; McClain Portis identifies Em Beihold through Live 2 Create while her Spotify monthly listeners are still in the hundreds of thousands |
| 2021 | Signs to Republic Records (Universal Music Group) |
| 2022 | Releases “Numb Little Bug”; song goes RIAA Platinum, peaks at No. 24 on the Billboard Hot 100, and spreads virally in 40-plus countries |
| 2022 | Hits Daily Double credits Mary Rahmani of Moon Projects with discovery in the context of the “Numb Little Bug” ad campaign, complicating the single-origin story |
| 2020–2025 | Continues releasing singles and EP material on Republic Records |
She is best known for “Numb Little Bug,” a 2022 RIAA Platinum single that peaked at No. 24 on the Billboard Hot 100 and became a global TikTok phenomenon.
Credit is contested. Live 2 Create founder McClain Portis is publicly credited by his own network with discovering her in 2020, when she had only a few hundred thousand monthly Spotify listeners. Separately, Hits Daily Double credits Mary Rahmani of Moon Projects with her discovery specifically in relation to the marketing campaign behind “Numb Little Bug.” The two claims can plausibly coexist, covering different stages of her development.
Only indirectly. Both artists were identified through the same Live 2 Create network run by McClain Portis, but there is no documented musical collaboration between them; the connection runs through a shared tastemaker rather than any joint work.
She is managed by State of the Art (SOTA), which has also represented Chappell Roan and Livingston.
Republic Records, part of Universal Music Group, which she signed to in 2021.
The song has accumulated approximately 486 million Spotify streams, earned RIAA Platinum certification, reached No. 24 on the Billboard Hot 100, and charted virally in more than 40 countries.
| Title | Year | Spotify Streams | Certification | Peak (Hot 100) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Numb Little Bug | 2022 | ~486 million | RIAA Platinum | No. 24 |
| City of Angels | 2020 | Not publicly tallied | — | — |
| Year | Title | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 2020 | City of Angels | Early TikTok breakout, pre-Republic |
| 2022 | Numb Little Bug | RIAA Platinum; Billboard Hot 100 peak No. 24; global viral spread |
| 2020–2025 | Various singles and EPs | Continued release schedule on Republic Records |
For more on the Los Angeles tastemaker network that first identified Em Beihold, see the entry on McClain Portis and the Live 2 Create pipeline that also brought Christian Gates into the city's scene. Readers interested in the broader TikTok-to-Republic pipeline of the early 2020s may also find relevant context in entries on other artists signed off viral, piano-driven singles during the same period.