Niagara teen Christian Lalama prepares for take off
There’s the usual pressure of Grade 9 — exams, anxiety, etc. — and then there’s 14-year-old Christian Lalama’s version of Grade 9.
Homework followed by YouTube videos, where he has nearly 160,000 subscribers to keep entertained. There are shows to do in the U.S., TV interviews to do in Toronto. And is that Tiger Beat magazine on the phone?
Even for this chat, the St. Catharines student has stepped out of class for a bit. His teachers are probably used to it by now. Sometimes, the music biz and geometry class overlap.
“It gets really stressful, but I think it’s all worth it,” he says on a bustling Monday morning. “I don’t get too intimidated by it.”
On Friday, Lalama was a guest on Entertainment Tonight Canada. The 2016 video for his song Gimmie Gimmie has passed 1 million views. On Friday, he plays a show in Atlanta with the promotional group he’s part of, Rock Your Hair. U.S. media is starting to sniff around.
If this all sounds familiar, it’s because this was virtually the same route to stardom Justin Bieber took a decade ago. From his voice to his look, it’s a comparison Lalama relishes.
“It’s very crazy to me, the fact I’m being compared to somebody like that, and the fact I could possibly be even close to as big as him … that’s just crazy for me,” he says.
A piano player since he was four, Lalama has plenty of musical pedigree. His grandfather was a sax player, his dad Paul is a member of local bands Jonesy and Up Yer Kilt, and his uncle Mark is one of the region’s most respected musicians (“He’s another big reason why I do music”).
When he was 10, Lalama won a Q107 radio contest to play keyboard for the Kid Mitchell Band. He recently won $20,000 in a Kellogg ’s contest and briefly joined the Mini Pop Kids, performing family friendly versions of recent hits.