The Amazing 12 Year Old Sixth Grade Musician

This guy is going places.  Greyson Michael Chance is a 12 year old in the 6th Grade in Oklahoma.  He plays the piano, writes songs, sings, etc.  He has great musical talent and is clearly going somewhere.  He has become famous for a rendition of Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi”.  In the past 3.5ish hours, the video has received almost 1 million new views for a total of more than 2.1 million views!  Personally though, I like his two original songs even better.  Watch out Justin Bieber…

Check out Greyson’s YouTube Channel.

The following article is from Yahoo!:

Little Lord Gaga: Greyson Michael Chance’s “Paparazzi” Is A Web Sensation

Posted Tue May 11, 2010 4:17pm PDT by Lyndsey Parker

Lady Gaga parodies and tributes abound on the Interweb–some funny, some serious, some good, some not-so-good. But the school recital performance of “Paparazzi” by boy wonder Greyson Michael Chance just might be the best yet. As the teacher emceeing the Edmond’s Sixth Grade Festival says at the end of Greyson’s stunning piano performance, this mega-talented kid could even “teach Lady Gaga a lesson.”

Greyson is bona fide prodigy (as his lovely original piano compositions “Stars” and “Broken Hearts” on his YouTube channel demonstrate), and his talents are being celebrated on a national scale now that his “Paparazzi” video–in which he bangs out the piano ballad while his classmates look on in shock and awe, mouths agape–has gone viral. The video has gotten more than 36,000 views so far, and he’s even been invited to perform on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” this Thursday.

According to his bio on his YouTube profile, Greyson is “very inspired by Lady Gaga and Augustana.” Greyson additionally explains: “Lady Gaga is a freak but she has so much talent and her style of music is what I would like mine to be when I’m older. Augustana is one of the most underrated bands I think ever to step [on] the planet. They have so much talent it is not funny. They have such a good concept with folk and rock. It is very sad that they are so unknown.”

Greyson may look like a Justin Bieber clone with his sideswept-banged bowl cut, but with musical taste like that, clearly this boy is no prepubescent pop robot. This kid is deep. (His aforementioned original song “Stars” is about a woman who dies of cancer and meets her husband in heaven, for instance–not exactly “One Less Lonely Girl,” huh?) Today’s tween fangirls would be way better off worshipping a role model like Greyson over Bieber–and judging from the flustered way the girls react in the background of his recital clip, such wide-scale worship may not be far off. After Greyson’s upcoming “Ellen” appearance, surely countless more tweens will be his biggest fans, following him until he loves them.

Random Questions/Thoughts On My Mind

It is May.  Why is it in the 30s/40s in Denver?  Why is it snowing in Denver?  It should be the end of Spring/beginning of Summer!

Someone in my class just opened a can in class.  My professor said “I hope that was a beer.”  Was she serious?

My apartment building, Asbury Green, is new (as of this past fall).  My biggest frustration may be the lobby elevator.  It is super slow.  You can wait forever for the elevator to stop at your floor.  And because you have to wait the elevator often stops at every floor.  The cycle continues.  Because of this, I often walk down the stairs when leaving my third floor apartment.  It’s faster and I guess healthier.  The stairwell used to smell great – like clean, like new carpet, like fresh paint.  Now it smells gross.  Maybe moldy?  I think it smells like gross, dirty, wet, dogs.  And I love dogs.  What happened?