16th November
Gorilla
8/10
29 year old from Californian Kina Grannis is a self-made star that built her fan-base on YouTube with over 1 million subscribers. It all started when she won a competition with her song ‘Message From The Heart’ which got played during the Super Bowl and got her signed onto a record label. She dropped out of the label to have full control over the music she produced. Since then, with the help of her online fans, she has produced five albums and is currently on her third worldwide tour. She’s even hosted a talk on TEDx about online communities and her success story as result of them. Manchester seemed to share the love for Kina with the surprisingly big turn-out.
Imaginary Future, who also happens to be her husband, opened the night with his mellow and quite melancholic music. He checked to see if the audience was still with him half way through due to his soft tones usually listened to by fans when they are about to go to sleep.
Kina then came on stage exciting the fans or ‘Kinerds’ who got to see their favorite YouTuber away from the screen. She interacted with them by calling some of them on stage to sing with her and having a little Q&A session. She started off with the first track from her new album Elements, ‘Dear River’, then moved onto ‘In Your Arms’ from her first album Stairwells which has a music video with over 11 million views. It involves a quarter million jelly beans in stop motion and took 2 years to make. She also sang ‘I Knew This Would Be Love’ with her husband – their two voices blending together made everyone’s heart melt. Her voice was on point throughout, effortlessly switching from high to low whispers, capturing the emotions of the audience. It was like a procession of all her best YouTube videos with her old and new originals, as well as covers like ‘Sweater Weather’ by the Neighbourhood.
Finally, she ended the night perfectly with my all-time favourite song ‘The One You Say Goodnight To’ with the audience clapping along to the beat.
