Brandon Pacheco started out making YouTube videos for his grandmother. Some 300,000 views later, he’s an online sensation.
Like Justin Bieber before him, the 12-year-old singer from east Hamilton has tapped into the limitless power of the Internet, using YouTube to promote his own unique take on the sugar-sweet pop rock he adores.
Clad in a backwards cap, with brown hair just above his eyes, he recorded living room covers of Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift songs that have racked up hundreds of thousands of hits on YouTube.
Since posting his first video online last year, Pacheco’s popular song choices have made him an accidental star among teeny-bopper fanatics, many of whom scour YouTube for anything related to Bieber.
It’s a testament to the “Bieber Fever” formula that dominates today’s pop culture landscape. In other words, singers post a homemade video online and simply wait for the right person to see it.
“I’ve been singing ever since I can remember,” said Pacheco, who enjoys everything from pop and country to hip hop and rock ‘n’ roll. “It’s all great.”
He’s not sure if he wants to be famous just yet, but he isn’t ruling it out, either.
Pop stars such as Bieber have scored millions of views on YouTube, making the 16-year-old from Stratford one of the most sought-after performers on the planet.
The teen idol is famous for being discovered online, and it wasn’t long before he landed a contract with Island Records (Mariah Carey, Bon Jovi) and started releasing chart-topping albums.
Instant stardom isn’t new, but it certainly has changed.
Less than 20 years ago, a more common path toward pop stardom involved performing at talent shows, being noticed by an agent, landing a record deal and hopefully releasing an album that appealed to TV and radio stations.
“In the past, the only outlet you had to promote a video was the corporate television networks and MuchMusic,” said Jamie Smith, program director at Indi 101, Mohawk College’s independent radio station.
“Some artists were lucky to even get noticed at all.”
However, the Internet has changed the nature of scouting young talent.
“With the advent of YouTube, artists can make their own videos, have their own channel and truly show who they are,” said Smith, who noted record companies are always searching for the next big thing online.
For Dr. Henry Giroux, a professor of English and cultural studies at McMaster University, the YouTube phenomenon reflects a push against the “dominant media” and its stranglehold over pop culture.
“In this day and age, the media makes it so difficult for anybody to break in. These kids just don’t have access,” said Giroux, who sympathizes with young artists such as Pacheco who are latching on to the Internet.
However, the flip side of the coin is how diluted pop culture has become in the wake of Internet technology.
“Social media has sort of collapsed into celebrity culture,” Giroux said. “Rather than promoting these singers and celebrating their talents, it often celebrates their foibles instead.”
Lindsay Lohan is the perfect example of this darker trend. Within hours of being whisked into a Beverly Hills courthouse earlier this week for violating probation, the 24-year-old starlet was all over YouTube.
Multiple “raw” or amateur videos yielded thousands of instant views, with Lohan’s shame and embarrassment exposed for all the world to see — and critique.
Smith calls this trend “instant gratification,” or the desire to praise and defame celebrities at the drop of a hat.
It’s the downside to a life in the public eye, but for young singers such as Pacheco, posting videos online is still all about having fun, staying modest and simply waiting for whatever happens next.
Brandon Pacheco will sing O Canada at Brian Timmis Stadium tonight at 8 p.m., opening for a local soccer match.
Written by Andrew Baulcomb
