Growing up, Grant Perez would listen to Usher, Ne-Yo and Beyonce, and he would think, 'What can I do to sound like them?'
It turns out karaoke — where you get to hear yourself through speakers and try again and again to better your score — can be useful for answering that question.
"It's just a common thing for Filipinos," Perez, 18, says.
"A lot of Asian families love karaoke."
Perez first uploaded a video of himself singing to YouTube when he was 12.
Encouraged by his older siblings, who were also musical, he soon started learning the guitar, helping him to build up a collection of dozens of cover performances — of songs by everyone from Rich Brian to The Beatles — on his YouTube channel.
Now, six years after his first video, with views topping 1 million per song and an international fanbase, Perez sits at the nexus of two distinct trends.
One is a well-trodden route to stardom via covers on YouTube (think Justin Bieber, Troye Sivan, etc).
The other is a lockdown-fuelled surge, both in terms of supply and demand, in bedroom-performance videos on YouTube, a consequence of our collective habit right now to trawl digital platforms in search of connection.
Helping people sleep during a pandemic
Perez, who lives with his parents and sister in suburban Sydney, has seen his views steadily increase over the years.
But around the time of the first coronavirus lockdowns, he began taking song requests with a therapeutic quality.
His Sing You To Sleep series has now steepened that growth trajectory.
By the second video, recorded like the rest of his work on an iPhone using an $80 microphone, he had clocked his first million views.
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"People started to comment and just say … 'this helped my mum, this helped my brother', and I guess because they are home they needed that relaxation," he said.
It's not surprising this kind of stuff has cut through.
"First of all, people are watching more YouTube in general because of isolation," Ashley Chang, YouTube's culture and trends manager for Asia Pacific, said.
"Having said that, we know that people have been finding it hard to sleep.
"Search in views of content related to insomnia, for example, have increased dramatically during lockdown."
It's similar to the popularity during lockdown of "with me", participatory content on YouTube — the videos that helped turn baking sourdough into an early-lockdown trend.
The bedroom as the 2020 stage
Even outside Perez's sleep series, this type of intimate, lo-fi bedroom performance — in some ways, a part of YouTube's DNA — has been more popular since lockdown, according to Mr Chang.
"Because people have been relegated to their homes, it's not just the bedroom musicians who have been posting this kind of content. We have seen major artists do the exact same thing," he said.
We saw Lady Gaga do it. Sam Smith. Pink.
The bedroom became the de facto stage in 2020, with mega-stars more accustomed to stadiums retracing their steps back into a more formative performance space.
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It aligns with the sensibilities of Gen Z, who demand direct connection and authenticity.
They get to know a performer, meet their family and be part of their journey, as Sivan's fans were part of his coming out.
"There's no set design; there's no pyrotechnics or lights … it's a person sharing their sensitivity with the world in a way that doesn't feel mediated," Mr Chang said.
He and others believe it could propel an economic shift in the performance of music, particularly among a younger generation so comfortable with digital performance.
Already, the live music industry has had to innovate during lockdown, with new platforms emerging.
This week, Facebook brought in the ability for creators to charge for live-streamed gigs directly through its platform.
"There's potential in live streaming to hugely increase income from a live show," Nick O'Byrne, who manages Courtney Barnett, told a recent industry panel.
"We're forced into this position now, but that will be a huge positive to come out of this."
Turning YouTube into a career
Grant doesn't have a schedule for his music — he uploads tracks day and night.
That's partly because his audience sits across time zones, with people in Australia the fourth-biggest share of his fanbase behind those in the US, Indonesia and the Philippines.
"Fandoms are defined primarily by their passions, instead of their nationality," Mr Chang said.
That's particularly so for music, he said, which tends to be language agnostic. It's why K-pop is so huge in a country like Brazil, or even Australia.
"I think for Grant there is also a concurrent force of Asian representation."
Grant deferred from his design degree at UNSW after the last trimester, hoping to focus his energy on his YouTube channel, which currently brings him a monthly income from ad revenue in the four digits — "definitely comparable to a part-time job".
His parents want him to finish his degree — and he does plan to — but right now, focusing on music has been the right choice.
"I was like, 'I am going to try and grind out as much as I can, learn as much as I can,' and so far it is proving to be beneficial because I can actually work with the people that want to work with me."
That includes at least one talent-management firm, based in Los Angeles, who contacted him via Instagram. They have been working on some original songs together.
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But even if he follows the trajectory of Troye Sivan or Audrey Mika — another YouTube cover artist-turned-pop star — he doesn't see himself giving up on bedroom covers.
He likes crossing genres, doing The Killers' Mr Brightside "but sad" or an especially melancholic rendition of Olivia Newton-John's Hopelessly Devoted To You.
"Even if I am old I will make YouTube videos," he said.
"I just find it really fun."
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMibmh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmFiYy5uZXQuYXUvbmV3cy8yMDIwLTA4LTIyL2dyYW50LXBlcmV6LWZpbmRzLWF1ZGllbmNlLXN1cmdlLW9uLXlvdXR1YmUtZHVyaW5nLWNvcm9uYXZpcnVzLzEyNTc3MjM40gEnaHR0cHM6Ly9hbXAuYWJjLm5ldC5hdS9hcnRpY2xlLzEyNTc3MjM4?oc=5
2020-08-21 20:05:00Z
CBMibmh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmFiYy5uZXQuYXUvbmV3cy8yMDIwLTA4LTIyL2dyYW50LXBlcmV6LWZpbmRzLWF1ZGllbmNlLXN1cmdlLW9uLXlvdXR1YmUtZHVyaW5nLWNvcm9uYXZpcnVzLzEyNTc3MjM40gEnaHR0cHM6Ly9hbXAuYWJjLm5ldC5hdS9hcnRpY2xlLzEyNTc3MjM4
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