Famous TikTok voice now soothes you to sleep on Calm

The voice that launched a million TikToks belongs, it turns out, to a real person – who is now helping you drift off to sleep in a brand new Sleep Story on Calm.

You might have thought “Jessie”, the perky, robot-like voice of TikTok was made by AI. But that instantly recognizable text-to-speech voice actually belongs to Kat Callaghan, a Canadian radio host and voiceover artist, who created Jessie’s ultra-upbeat voice by embellishing her own.

From TikTok to Calm

In the new Sleep Story, called Dreams, Memes & Viral Themes, Kat takes listeners on an immersive journey, as she describes in rhyming verse a series of dreamy locations based on surreal, sleepy versions of popular TikTok genres.

She visits a land of “oddly satisfying” things (like swirling paint and slow-rising marshmallows) and another of ASMR (short for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response: a tingling, goosebumps-like sensation felt in response to certain triggering sounds or sights).

Kat starts narrating the Sleep Story in her peppy voice of TikTok’s Jessie—with its robotic, upspeak intonation—and then transitions to her normal, far more relaxing voice, getting gradually slower and sleepier as the tale proceeds.

So, how did Kat find switching from pepping up TikTok users with Jessie’s frantic vocals to lulling Calm listeners to sleep in a bedtime story for grownups?

“What I knew would be most challenging about narrating a Sleep Story was retaining Jessie’s voice somewhere in there but slowing it right down, making it calm and mellow, since Jessie’s voice is so much faster and more upbeat.”

It’s as if Jessie learns to speak human.

Oddly calming

For Kat, narrating a Sleep Story wasn’t a surprising transition, after discovering how many TikTok users actually find the voice of Jessie to be calming.

“What surprised me when I first revealed I was the voice of Jessie was lots of people writing to me saying that they found my TikTok voice comforting and even fell asleep to it. I hadn’t thought of it as soothing since it’s so upbeat, with a rising intonation. But many feel a sense of relaxation listening to it.”

She thinks the sense of familiarity may be what comforts people about Jessie’s voice. It’s a steady and reliable presence, especially for the younger generation.

A voice of her own

Once it became known Jessie’s voice wasn’t AI after all, everyones first question was: is this how Kat’s talks all the time?

“I don’t talk like that normally,” says Kat “but you can hear traces of Jessie when I get excited.”

Tune into Dreams, Memes & Viral Themes to hear it for yourself.

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