FULL OF GRACE

Listening in the Moonlight

Salut captains! How have you been feeling in this lovely past week? If I am being completely honest… I wasn’t that well. I have been suffering from a horrid headache. I’ve tried taking some medicine to calm it down but the only one that seemed to effectively work was the song Moonlight, which you can listen to below:

I was so, SO grateful for the relief and peace that it brought me, that I decided to talk about its amazing singer this week. Ladies and gentlemen, may I present you Grace VanderWaal, our artist of this week!

Her story starts the day she was born (obviously!), on 15 January 2004, in Kansas, United States of America. By the age of 3, she developed the interest in music, using a wireless microphone to sing. A while later, seeing a family friend play the ukulele, she decided to learn how to play it. So, by the age of 11, she used the money she received as a gift for her 11^th birthday and bought one herself.

Little did she know that one year later, not only she would be playing it perfectly, but playing it in live television, to hundreds of people, on one of the most watched American TV shows: America’s Got Talent.

Before her appearance in the program, the only public performances she had ever done were in few open-mic nights near her hometown of Suffern, New York, where she usually performed Twenty One Pilots covers.

Her mother was the responsible for her participation in the 11^th season of the show, signing her up without telling her at first. When Grace found out, she ended up enthusiastically rolling with it, obtaining the ‘Golden Buzzer’ by Howie Mandel on her very first audition (which happens to be the most watched of the history of America’s Got Talent, with more than 75 million views on YouTube), and winning the season. During her participation, she presented majorly authorial songs and Simon Cowell said that she would be “the next Taylor Swift”.

In October of the same year, in addition to the one million dollars prize and a headline concert in Las Vegas, her hometown threw her a parade, where she was presented with the key to the county.

(Found at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/disneyabc/34219774641)

Just The Beginning

After the success in AGT, her career only evolved leading her to release the EP Perfectly Imperfect in December 2016.

In an interview to the Rolling Stone magazine, she said that the song she’s most proud of is “Gossip Girl”. Read the extract about its meaning: “(it’s) about the shock of being suddenly embraced by popular kids in the wake of her instant-fame. ‘I had a lot of those fake friends’ she says. ‘You just have to realize it’s happening. You can’t get caught up in the ‘Oh, my God, they want to be my friend finally’ (http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/meet-grace-vanderwaal-pop-prodigy-on-the-edge-of-13-w459126).

But true friendships are also present in Grace’s life as she talks in some interviews about the strong bond with Millie Bobby Brown (Eleven, in the Netflix series Stranger Things) and Maddie Ziegler (dancer most known by her appearances in Dance Moms and in some of Sia’s music videos, such as Elastic Heart).

Besides all the mentioned before, miss VanderWaal (such a cool surname, right?) has already earned some impressive accomplishments: her first music video Moonlight had over 10 million views only in the first two months of release, she was nominated Best New Artist by the Radio Disney Music Award and the Best New Thing on Teen’s Choice Awards; she also received in November 2017 the Rising Star award by Billboard at the Women in Music event and had been previously selected for Billboard’s prestigious 21 Under 21 list of “powerful young voices” who will define the next generation in music.

With a huge talent, a beautiful and mature voice (skilfully controlled!) and a lot of facial expressions, Grace is full of grace (I couldn’t resist the joke, sorry not sorry). She recently released her first full-length album Just the Beginning which is sure to be a huge success and spread Grace’s name all over the world. Her songs, in general, have only one problem: they always seem to be too short, and leave you wanting for more.

As it can be seen on her Tour dates, the majority of her upcoming concerts are already sold out, the next ones will happen in Poughkeepsie, NY (December 09) and in Cambridge, MA (February 05).

Her social media accounts, where you can find more about her work are:

Instagram: @gracevanderwaal

Twitter: @GraceVanderWaal

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GraceVanderWaalMusic

Snapchat: https://www.snapchat.com/add/gracevanderwaal

YouTube Channel: Grace VanderWaal VEVO

Website: gracevanderwaal.com

I’d like to leave a huge shout out to my friend Lauro Luna, who first introduced me to this glorious artist. Thanks, mate!

I’d also like to apologize because this week’s post is one day delayed, the crew and I try to keep the ship organized but sometimes… Life happens and what was planned doesn’t come out as we would like. 👀

Hope that you have enjoyed our adventure of this week! Follow us on @themusicalexpedition (Instagram) and The Musical Expedition (Facebook) to be up-to-date on the latest news and possible delays or problems being faced (we’re sorry again!)

Until we meet again next week,

Here was A., this ship’s captain.

Over and Out.