Hey Twilight Fans: Did You Associate A Song Called 'The River Flows in You' With Bella's Lullaby? We Talked To The Girl Who Posted It
If you were deep into the Twilight fandom back around 2008, right before the movies came out, you were part of a thing in its prime. Like Beatlemania at the height of its intensity, Twilight was one of the biggest crazes for teenage girls of a particular era - and, unlike fans of The Beatles, these kiddos had access to the internet.
As a matter of fact, Twilight, along with other contemporary crazes like One Direction, was one of the first big teen sensations to truly be affected by internet fandom, and one of the proofs of that effect is what fans thought of "Bella's Lullaby."
For those who perhaps don't remember: "Bella's Lullaby" is a song that Edward composes for Bella in Twilight. It's described as a beautiful, loving, if not melancholic, melody, meant to lull the restless human girl to sleep - and to exist as a love song from her vampire love.
The only problem was, before the movie came out, fans had a wildly different idea of what the song would sound like - and back in those days, nobody knew how to fact-check online, and misinformation spread fast. One bit of misinformation that seems to have completely permeated the fandom is the "alternate" version of "Bella's Lullaby," which really wasn't Bella's lullaby at all.
The culprit was this video, posted to YouTube long before the Twilight movie's release date of November 21st, 2008:
The song in the video, as you can also read in the description, is really called "The River Flows in You," a beautiful composition by South Korean pianist Yiruma - and it is a distinct departure from the real "Bella's Lullaby," which was featured in the film itself.
Many unsuspecting young fans who had already been listening along to the fan-posted version of the lullaby while reading the book were extremely disappointed upon hearing the real one in the movie - the most common complaint was that it sounded too sad and eerie to be a love song or a lullaby, but there were others as well.
This caused a huge ripple effect in the fandom, and many fans over the years have said they still prefer to listen to the Yiruma song over the other, official version.
But The Mystery Poster Isn't A Mystery Anymore...
Well, it's been roughly 15 years, but we now know the name of the mysterious person behind the confusion: Her name's Megan Orban, and she was just another one of us: A Twilight Tween who just couldn't wait for the movie come out to hear what "Bella's Lullaby" might sound like.
Megan posted in a Facebook group called Born Zillennial (for all those 90s babies who were never sure whether they were Millennials or Gen Z) more or less "confessing" to being the start of all this confusion - and as one of those formerly confused tweens, I had a lot of questions for her.
First of all, I had to know - how did she find the song in the first place?
"I was about 12 at the time, I really had no idea what I was doing! I have a vague memory of finding it through a playlist on Stephanie Meyer's website. I was reminded recently that she had a playlist of songs that inspired her while writing the books, and "River Flows In You" was on that...and we all kind of took that and ran with it."
What's funny is that, the way the internet worked back then, reposting was lawless and frequent, so 12-year-old Megan had no idea how much of an impact she would have - even when her video started initially climbing in view count, she could never have known the number of less-clearly-labeled reposts made it to other, now-defunct mp3 sharing sites like GrooveShark or Playlist.com.
"I never ever looked at anything other than the video interactions itself. It wasn't until I posted about the video in the Born Zillenial Facebook group last month that I realized how much the video defined some experiences for Twilight fans. It's crazy to me that I had a small impact on things like Google searches and music services."
The video is still up, and it's amassed nearly 30 million views between 2008 and now.
"I revisited the video after a friend brought it back up to me, and I couldn't believe it was still popular. You go to the comments section and there are so many stories of how people found the song through my video and eventually used it in or to get through major life events, learned to play piano because of it, et cetera."
Indeed, some of the comments are truly touching - the top comment on the video currently is from one user who says his wife walked down the aisle to this song.
And yes, in case you were wondering, Orban still prefers the headcanon version, "The River Flows in You," to the actual Bella's Lullaby.
"Why does the official lullaby have multiple instruments and parts? Edward is now a one-man orchestra? That has always bothered me!"
When I asked Orban, now in her 20s and barely associated with the Twilight fandom anymore, how she felt after learning she had such a huge impact, she had this to say:
"It's such an abstract thought to know that something I did influenced so many people in so many different ways. Reading comments from other people who might not even necessarily be a part of the Twilight fandom, but just lovers of the song in general, is really surreal.
"And then to be told that I was some sort of anomaly to the fandom and created a Mandela effect for a lot of people - part of me feels bad because I was only 12 and had no idea what I was doing, and the other part of me feels kind of like... "Cool, yeah, I did that!"
"I guess at the end of the day I'm just glad that I was able to share a beautiful song with so many people!"
Oh, yeah, and one more thing:
"Just a shout out to Born Zillenial for allowing me to out myself as the mystery YouTuber - it was super fun to talk about the video with people my age who connected with it the most. I had a good laugh at some of the comments, like 'It was YOU?!' Yep, guilty!"
