Well, well, well… this girl can sing.
Tiffany Ruan is capitalizing this week on worldwide attention she’s getting after a clip of her singing “Hallelujah” into a well went viral.
The 17-year-old high school student from Wichita was on a spring break trip to Italy with her singing group, the Madrigals, when she discovered the acoustics of a wishing well in Spoleto.
Ruan posted a 48-second video showing her singing part of the classic tune by Canada’s Leonard Cohen. She tweeted: “found a well in italy with a nice echo.”
The clip quickly went viral, racking up more than 129,000 retweets and 312,000 “likes” in the first week. On YouTube, it’s been seen more than 1.6 million times.
“I’m overwhelmed guys what's happening. y'all are so sweet,” Ruan tweeted. “I promise I'll keep posting more singing videos !!!”
Ruan told her local CBS affiliate she’s received a lot of messages of support.
"I think my favourite messages are probably the ones that come from people who say they're having a really hard time right now in their lives, and my voice in that video kind of like uplifted their soul," she said.
"That sounds like cheesy I know, but it just like makes me really happy and it totally makes my day to read messages like those.”
Over the weekend, the singing student posted a video on YouTube of her full version of “Hallelujah.” It’s had more than 100,000 views already.
“i know i cut out a verse but i was in a rush to get it done today because im swamped with school work and stuff for the next few days,” Ruan explained in the description.
Montreal's Leonard Cohen recorded "Hallelujah" in 1984. It has since been covered by countless artists from all genres, including Bob Dylan, Jeff Buckley, k.d. lang, Bon Jovi and Pentatonix.
The song was given a new life after Cohen's death last November.