Greyson Chance

Greyson Chance
Chance in concert at the Hard Rock Cafe in Boston, Massachusetts on September 20, 2011
Background information
Birth name	Greyson Michael Chance
Born	(1997-08-16) August 16, 1997[1] Wichita Falls, Texas[2]
Origin	Edmond, Oklahoma[2]
Genres	Pop rock, electronic, dance-pop, funk
Occupation(s)	Singer-songwriter
Instruments	Piano, vocals, ukulele[3]
Years active	2010–present
Labels	eleveneleven, Maverick, Streamline, Geffen
Associated acts	Miranda Cosgrove, Cody Simpson
Website	greyson-official.com

Greyson Michael Chance (born August 16, 1997)^[1] is an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. His April 2010 performance of Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi" at a sixth-grade music festival went viral on YouTube,^[4] gaining widespread attention and over 56 million views as of August 2016, as well as an appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show shortly afterward. Two of his original compositions, "Stars" and "Broken Hearts", gained over six and eight million views respectively on his YouTube channel.^[5] His debut single, "Waiting Outside the Lines", was released in October 2010. Chance's debut album, Hold On 'Til the Night, was released on August 2, 2011.

Chance released his second EP, Somewhere Over My Head, on May 13, 2016. The lead single, "Afterlife", was released in October 2015, followed by "Hit and Run" and "Back On the Wall" in February and April 2016 respectively.

Life and career

1997–2010: Early life and musical beginnings

Chance was born on August 16, 1997 in Wichita Falls, Texas, and grew up in Edmond, Oklahoma. The youngest child of Scott and Lisa Chance, he has an older sister, Alexa, and an older brother, Tanner, both of whom also make music. Chance began playing the piano at age 8 and had three years of piano lessons.

Chance's "Paparazzi" cover video was posted to YouTube, on April 28, 2010, and for almost two weeks the video generated low views. At least two social websites, GossipBoy.ca and reddit.com, posted video embeds on May 10, 2010. The next morning, it was embedded on RyanSeacrest.com, which reported finding the video via BuzzFeed, a website that attempts to track and predict emerging viral internet memes.^[6] Later in the day, TVGuide,^[7] The Huffington Post,^[8] and Yahoo! Music's video blog, Video Ga Ga,^[4] also posted articles embedding the video; TVGuide mentioned in its article that a Facebook fan page had already been started for Chance. That afternoon, Ryan Seacrest and Ellen DeGeneres linked the video on their Twitter accounts,^[9][10] as did celebrity Ashton Kutcher^[11] later that evening.

DeGeneres first saw the video after Chance's brother, Tanner Chance, wrote to her show suggesting she watch it.^[12] The video had about 10,000 views when DeGeneres first saw it.^[13] On the afternoon of May 11, Yahoo! Music reported: "As of this writing, the video has had more than 36,000 views so far, and he's even been invited to perform on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.^[4] On May 12, DeGeneres' announcement of Chance's booking on the show was broadcast at different times across the U.S. and posted to her website.^[14] Wall Street Journal^[15] and Los Angeles Times,^[16] among other mainstream media, posted articles embedding the video and announcing the forthcoming appearance. Greyson taped an interview and performance of "Paparazzi" in Los Angeles.^[17] During the interview, Chance received a phone call from Lady Gaga,^[18] who the boy says is his "true inspiration."^[19] That evening, ABC World News broadcast a report on Chance, introduced by Diane Sawyer, who said the story struck ABC News as "part Billy Elliot and part Glee."^[20] On May 13, Chance's appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show was broadcast,^[21] and mainstream media, including CBS^[22] and People,^[23] reported on the appearance. That morning, Ryan Seacrest posted another link on Twitter, this time to the video of Chance appearing on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.^[24] Not only has he received attention from DeGeneres and Seacrest but also, on May 14, singer, songwriter, and author David Archuleta linked the video on Twitter claiming that Greyson "is talented."^[25]

On May 15, Greyson Chance created an official MySpace page^[26] and an official Twitter account.^[27] The same day, Crazed Hits, a music industry "tip-sheet" run by Alex Wilhelm, while citing no sources, reported that Interscope Records had signed 12-year-old Chance to a record deal.^[28] The same day, NewsOK posted a video, "Three Things to Know about Greyson Michael Chance", and an article in which Chance's father was quoted as saying the family would spend the weekend deciding how they wanted to proceed before signing any contracts.^[29]

On May 18, the New York Post reported on the deal with Interscope Records, citing Chance's sister and father as confirming the deal; The Post also reported that calls made to Chance's school were being referred to Guy Oseary.^[30] Chance made a second appearance on Ellen, airing May 26, 2010, on which he performed his original song "Broken Hearts", received a $10,000 award for winning Ellen's Wonderful Web of Wonderment contest, a brand new Yamaha piano, and was announced as DeGeneres's first signed artist to her new recording label eleveneleven.^[31][32] While explaining her reasons for naming her record label, she listed as one reason the fact that she first saw Chance's "Paparazzi" cover on May 11, 2010. Also, she states that 11 is Greyson's soccer jersey number.^[33] Guy Oseary, who manages Madonna's career, and Troy Carter, who manages Lady Gaga's career, would be co-managers of Greyson Chance's career, but no partnership with a major recording label had been finalized.^[34]

The chronology of events has resulted in media analysis of the marketing phenomenon separately from musical or biographical elements. On May 15, 2010, The Christian Science Monitor published an article by staff writer Gloria Goodale; citing Chance's quick rise to media attention and the establishment of various official and fan websites for Chance, as well as concerns raised by music industry analyst Jeff Snyder about the quality of the video itself, Goodale asked "whether there's a Big Media hand behind sixth grader Greyson Michael Chance."^[35] On May 18, 2010, Goodale followed this up with a second article focusing on the modern "age of media manipulation", which she introduced by saying, "Reports so far suggest that the Greyson Chance YouTube video is legit."^[36] On May 18, 2010, ITN News posted a video report to its YouTube channel, in which many of the same questions were raised; highlighting aspects of Chance's "Paparazzi" video, media industry analyst Alan Stevens pointed out the growing inability within our modern media culture to distinguish between videos which are produced by amateurs and videos which are produced by professionals but made to appear amateur in origin.^[37]

2010–14: Hold On 'til the Night and Truth Be Told, Part 1

Greyson at the film premiere of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 in July 2011.

His debut single, "Waiting Outside the Lines", was released to iTunes on October 26, 2010. It was released digitally in the UK on December 9. The single also contained a remix featuring Filipina singer Charice, as well as studio versions of his covers of Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi" and "Fire" by Augustana.^[38] Throughout December, Chance appeared at We Day 2010 in downtown Toronto at the Air Canada Centre, where he performed the latter,^[39] and visited both Paris and London, appearing on local radio stations and giving private concerts in both cities.^[40][41] On February 5, 2011, Greyson Chance entered the National spotlight again with an appearance/performance of "Waiting Outside the Lines" on CBS's Early Show, while stopping through New York on Miranda Cosgrove's Dancing Crazy Tour.^[42] He then started the Waiting 4U tour with Australian pop/R&B singer Cody Simpson on April 9 in Ivins, Utah. The tour ended on May 18, 2011, in Portland, Oregon.

On May 17, 2011, his second single, "Unfriend You", was released to iTunes^[43] and, on May 23, Greyson visited The Ellen DeGeneres Show to premiere the single. After the performance, Greyson revealed a solid release date for his upcoming debut album, Hold On 'Til the Night, which was released on August 2, 2011. The music video features a cameo from Victorious star Ariana Grande.^[44]

On September 15, he again appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show to talk about his album, and also revealed that he had taken his first steps into acting, portraying a younger version of Jimmy Chance, the protagonist of Fox's comedy Raising Hope, in the series' second season premiere.^[45] The episode aired on September 20, 2011.

In November 2011, Greyson undertook a tour of Southeast Asia to promote his album, which had just been released in the region. The tour started in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where in addition to a showcase performance he was invited to perform at the Malaysian Music Industry Awards show (the first foreign artist so invited since 1999) with Malaysia YouTube sensation, Najwa Latif,^[46][47] Greyson also gave performances in Singapore; Kota Kinabalu (Borneo, Malaysia); Manila, Philippines; and Jakarta, Indonesia.^[48][49][50]

In March 2012, Greyson returned to Asia to support the release of a special edition of the album, which was released to the Asian market on March 20.^[51] He was accompanied by his full four-part band and gave full concert performances in Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Jakarta, and Manila, before going on without the band on a promotional tour to Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Bangkok, Thailand. In early July, he was back in the region for promotional and TV appearances in Hong Kong and Changsha (Hunan Province, China). In August, he performed at the MTV-CCTV Mandarin Music Awards show in Beijing and won the award for Most Popular New International Artist of the Year.^[52]

In November 2012, after releasing his new EP, Truth Be Told Part 1, he again returned to Asia for a promo tour starting in Kota Kinabalu (Borneo, Malaysia) to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Singapore and Manila, Philippines.

2014–present: Somewhere Over My Head

On January 13, 2014, Chance released a new song named "Temptation" onto his Soundcloud.^[53] He performed the song at the Sundance Film Festival. Throughout the year, he continued the process of writing and recording his EP, Somewhere Over My Head. On September 16, Chance released a single called "Thrilla In Manila".^[54] Another track named "Meridians" was released on March 24, 2015.^[55] Both songs, ultimately, did not appear on the final track list. The official lead single, "Afterlife", was released on October 29, 2015.^[56] In 2016, it was succeeded by "Hit & Run" on February 5^[57] and "Back On the Wall" on April 29^[58] as the second and third singles, respectively. On April 28, he released a new music video for his single "Back On The Wall" on his YouTube channel.^[59] The EP was released May 13, 2016.^[60]

Before the release of Somewhere Over My Head, on 27 January – 1 February, Chance did 3 shows in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York City.^[61][62] He had a release party of his new EP in YouTube Space LA on May 13, 2016. And on May 28–29, he had another 2 shows after the release of the EP in San Francisco and Seattle.

During promotion of the EP, Chance was also featured on an electronic dance track by tyDi and Jack Novak titled "Oceans", which was released on February 19, 2016.^[63]

In June 2016, one month after releasing his new EP, Somewhere Over My Head, Chance returned to Asia for a short promo tour starting in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), Penang (Malaysia), and Manila, Philippines.^[64]

Discography

Studio albums

Extended plays

Singles

Music videos

Tours

• Waiting 4U Tour
• Dancing Crazy Tour
• Hold On 'Til the Night Asia Tour

Awards and recognition

Notes

References

External links

• Official website
• Instagram
• Greyson Chance at the Internet Movie Database