I am a self-made recluse. I have no radio in the house, I rarely watch the television, and I even cringe at the thought of reading the daily broadsheet. Though I’m connected nearly at all hours to the net, my searches are primarily interest-driven, or I’m just trolling on Facebook or in my some other forum. So it is no wonder that it took me more than a year to come across Greyson Michael Chance.

    I wasn’t really looking for Greyson on youtube. It was all really Lyka’s fault, to put it bluntly. My precocious daughter was heckling me to look for a Lady Gaga video. She’s in that phase wherein kids like her are fixated on a certain kind of music or even performer. Somehow, she took up her liking for Lady Gaga from me. Anyway, so there we were, Lyka sitting impatiently on my lap. I trawled through videos of Gaga’s hits like Paparazzi and Poker Face. I let Lyka see the On The Rocks‘ rendition of Bad Romance. Then a little video from the suggested videos listed on the right side of the page caught my eye. The heading declared “Paparazzi: Lady Gaga covered by 11-year-old boy”, and being the troll that I am, I clicked the link. After a few minutes of waiting for the video to load, I was astounded to speechlessness.

    I’m not really sure what impressed me: his piano skills or his powerful voice. Well, I’ve heard of Justin Bieber, and personally, I’m not that impressed with Justin. Besides, I’ve had my fill of pop-dance music like his from the boy bands of the nineties. But there is something much more different with Greyson’s music. I looked up his other videos and I came across this one, Broken Hearts.

    To think that this song was composed and lettered by a thirteen-year-old, it is amazing. I am not a musical expert or anything and a few years of choir singing doesn’t really mean I know a lot, but despite the rough edges of this song, I’d say that this is a winner. Despite its slow tempo, the chorus is really catchy. i found myself singing that same chorus over and over again. That is how powerful the song, not to mention the lyrics can affect someone, or at least me. His lyrics are deep and at times, can be very moving. There is also the way his piano notes resonate that adds to the emotion contained in his pieces.

    I’ve seen the comments on his videos where there flames wars are raging. A Google search with the keywords “JB vs Geryson” gave me 2,440,000 results. I mean, WTF? I’ve never really listened to Justin Bieber’s music, but I don’t think that it’s fair to compare the two boys. First off, Justin Bieber started his career years earlier than Gryeson, and besides, they have vastly different musical styles as far as I know. There is also a whisper going around that after getting hooked up with Ellen Degeneres’ eleveneleven record label, his music somehow changed. I think whatever subtle changes could be accounted for by three things: puberty, musical accompaniment and better recording equipment. Anyway, I digress.

    I wrote this post as a shout out to others who still haven’t heard of Greyson Michael Chance. He’s the new kid making awesome music right now. I’m glad I stumbled upon his videos. He’s now among my Musical Pantheon alongside the Eraserhead, the Beatles, Jim Croce and Lady Gaga. XD

    I hope for better thing to come to Greyson, and I just hope that he’ll grow to be the awesomest artist that he has the potential to be. XD

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