So there is this anime I watched called Your Lie in April. I watched it because it looked pretty (and it was April at the time). The anime sucked, I was woefully disappointed by the end, BUT…it was so worth the 480 minutes I spent watching the show for this one scene:

A girl injures her ankle in her softball game, and her best friend, a nerdy prodigy kid around whom the story revolves, carries her all the way home. Nothing particularly interesting happens in this scene. She just starts crying and unloads all of her stress and how disappointed she is that they lost the game while he silently carries her, and some beautiful piano music plays in the background. I really can’t explain what it is about this scene that makes me so happy. It’s mid-spring, everyone is in shorts, there is a perpetual breeze, and the way the background of night is drawn is so charming and compelling. It’s not a heavy scene but it’s not just a filler. Everything about that scene is important, and so beautiful in the sense that is so real and heartbreakingly happy.

I don’t know what the name of the emotion is. Maybe contentment? Satisfaction with the charm and beauty? Happy that spring is almost here? Really not sure, but whatever it is, I have the same feeling when I listen to the real prodigy child Grace VanderWall’s new(ish) album, Just the Beginning.

It really is the beginning for this tall, quirky, 13-year-old vocalist. Oh, and songwriter. Oh, and if that’s not adorable enough for you, she plays the ukulele (she taught herself via the internet. Take that Mom and Dad, YouTube really is worth my while.) I really shouldn’t even use the word ‘adorable’ though, because she’s highly respected by many esteemed musicians. All eyes are on this “young Taylor Swift” as she is blazing her way through the music industry.

After slaying and winning America’s Got Talent with her golden buzzer hit, Grace VanderWall released her original album in November of 2017, collaborating with some award-winning producers and writers, including Ido Zmishlany (Shawn Mendes, Camila Cabello), Kinetics & One Love (Hailee Steinfeld), Greg Wells (Katy Perry, Adele), Gregg Wattenberg (Train, Phillips Phillips) and Sean Douglas (The Chainsmokers, Demi Lovato). The end result is a work of art with a captivating 13-year-old with at the center.

VanderWall’s vocals have been compared to that of Adele, Taylor Swift, and even young Michael Jackson on those high notes she belts out. Her voice is crackly and she almost sounds like she has an accent (she doesn’t, she’s from New York), but her raspy wide-range vocals really appeal to that indie vibe (look out First Aid Kit).

Her album opens up with “Moonlight,” an extremely catchy song that could really apply to any of us. People speculate on whether or not the girl that “lost her smile” in the song is really VanderWall. She kicks the door in, reaching out to every teenager, and every adult that is really reluctant to be an adult. “Sick of Being Told” follows next, affirming the feelings of reluctance to grow up. What’s awesome is that she is at that ripe, pivotal age of 13–on the brink of growing up but still a kid. However, she’s a wickedly articulate one, and she relates with everyone who has these feelings that we never really grow out of.

But just to remind you that this is no child’s play, “Burned” wakes us up with the soul-shaking piano and intensely dark love story. She doesn’t stay down for long though. “So Much More Than This” is a groundbreaking track that encourages and preaches the honest truths that apply to all of us, and I don’t mind taking this advice from her.

Grace VanderWall is so compelling because of her realness. She doesn’t try too hard, doesn’t clutter your mind or your ears with too much stuff, she doesn’t preach. She’s that feeling you get in the throws of spring when you’re being carried by your best friend. She’s a breath of fresh air, a pretty sky at night that you take a minute to appreciate. Her voice with her ukulele lulls you into a sense of happiness that you can’t even really explain. It just works. Like spring, it’s not too much and it’s not too little. It’s the perfect combination of warm and cool. It’s the beginning of an intensity that you can feel brewing in the air, and it’s spring for Grace VanderWall, because soon she will be the intense heat that will surround her as she burns up the music industry.

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