Should Greyson get a Chance?

If you haven’t heard of 12-year-old Greyson Chance yet, you probably don’t get on Facebook or watch Ellen very often. The 6th grader is a piano-playing singer from Oklahoma who rose to interweb fame with his rendition of “Paparazzi” by Lady Gaga at a talent show-esque event. He was recorded, uploaded to the celebrity-spewing machine YouTube, and now he’s gone viral with over 2,000,000 views.
In case you have a life, this is the now famed video:



[Note the incredibly lackluster faces on the girls behind him. These same girls are probably kicking themselves in the face for looking so trollish on a now internationally-spread video. Ha!]

If you are like me and like to lurk on the computer all the time, then forego that video and tell me what you think about Greyson Chance. Why? Well, if you Google his name into… well, Google, you’ll see a cornucopia of websites chanting that Mr. Chance is the new Justin Bieber.

For the record, I’m not sure how famous or how long someone has to be famous in order for them to have a “new” version of themselves. A “new” Michael Jackson or a “new” Madonna would make sense, but Justin Bieber has been renown now for barely a year, and to this day plenty of critics foresee him as a passing fad (cough, Ke$ha, cough). Regardless, I beg to differ that Chance is the “new” Bieber, not because I believe Bieber to be uber talented in any regard, but because I actually don’t think Chance will make it as the new rising young musician. He’s alright, I guess… he’s certainly not terrible. However, people complain about Bieber and the likes of Miley Cyrus as not knowing what “love” is and them not retaining the proper experience or social permission of peoples over the age of 16 to make gazillions of dollars. Why should this kid be any different? If anything, he deserves less of a reason to make it big considering he’s skyrocketed to fame by rendering a cover of someone else’s song.

Luckily, though, he has written, both lyrically and musically, two other songs entitled “Broken Hearts” and “Stars.” This is great, knowing that he doesn’t just have a cover of another song to back up his blossoming career; however, give a listen to the other songs and see whether or not he truly has a commercial future with his music. Personally, I don’t think he’s that great… obviously I’m taking into account that in these videos, it’s just him and his piano with a video camera watching, so he doesn’t have Grade-A producers or (God forbid) an autotuner to make him sound spectacular; and of course the fact that he’s only 12 doesn’t help his cause much. He definitely has potential, but for some reason, people around the world are already calling him a child prodigy and that. just. isn’t. true.

But, again, tell me what you think. Is he really that great? Comment wars, hooo!