It’s hard to think of anyone having a bigger year than Greyson Chance. In the span of eight months, the 13-year old singer-pianist went from performing pop hits at his school to having the third most-watched video of 2010 on YouTube and becoming a bona fide recording artist. Now Greyson is about to hit the road for the first time, supporting Miranda Cosgrove on her Dancing Crazy tour, and he just dropped the video for his debut single, “Waiting Outside The Lines“, in which he sings, plays piano, and makes a crowd of girls swoon. Not bad for a kid barely in the midst of puberty. Watch below.
Greyson Chance – “Waiting Outside The Lines”
We think Greyson is insanely talented, but we continue to think waiting a few more months — heck, why not a full year! — for the kid to work on his craft and get used to the demands of being a recording artist would have been a better move than ushering out an album as soon as possible. Then again, Susan Boyle had a similar instant explosion of success thanks to YouTube, shot out an album, and controlled the charts for weeks without much incident, so who knows?
And hey, just because he’s a newbie in the music scene, it doesn’t mean Greyson’s videos can’t have the same copious amounts of product placement as his peers’ vids! Although the Beats By Dre headphones the adoring female fan wears as she stands agape over Greyson is obvious (and much too expensive for a little girl to own — $229!), it’s not entirely distracting. Unlike the laughable close-up of a bottle of Flav water, held by held by the hand of a man whose face we have not seen nor will ever see:
What do you think of Greyson’s first official video? Does it make you crave peach-flavored water?
It went from classy to cliche when the little girls started to mob him. Not a bad song, but I agree that maybe he should have waited a few months to a year. When a kid is talented, sometimes it’s better to wait until the industry can see him/her as more than just another tween act. Otherwise, the media/industry tends to box these kids in as another “Justin Bieber” or whatever tween fav of the moment is.
Well I’m no music insider, but I’d guess there are 10-20 ambitious, non-performing industry types behind any given artist. He should be singing this song to them, or they should be listening to the lyrics of this song, because those industry types certainly live in boxes. I doubt that the main target audience will be as perturbed by much of this video as someone of my near-40ish state of being; the young girls will probably love it. But whoever designed and signed off on the concept behind this video seriously needs to be yanked kicking and screaming out of his/her box of cliches.
You should check out the version of Paparazzi on the EP that was released today. It’s several times better than the YouTube version and totally stripped down to Greyson and his piano. The version of Fire is also stripped down and not overproduced unlike Waiting Outside the Lines (although it has strings, etc., it is still acoustic.) I expect a very good album once it’s finished, and I remain hopeful, on the basis of Paparazzi and Fire, that we’ll get an album which isn’t as cliched as most teeny-bopper crap being mass-produced nowadays.
Thanks Curtis! I will check it out.
I really like Greyson Chance. He is able to convey unbelievable emotion for someone so young. I do not like this video though. Through over production they effectively eliminated all that made Greyson so fantastic. 30 seconds into the song I could hardly even pick out the piano from everything else going on. Sometimes less is more, and I think that was the case for Greyson. This young man was able to pour so much more soul and emotion into a song with just his voice and a piano. There was no need for all the flash. He doesn’t need it. Ellen Degeneres, tell your record label lackeys to back off and let this kid do what he did to get you to sign him.
Finally a young singer that actually has talent. I highly doubt he’ll ever come near auto-tune. Overly produced or not this was a beautiful video
St Kilda Harbour What looks like a wooden boat with 2 masts has had its mainsail come loose from the boom in todays strong winds. If you know the owner let them know.