As a music blogger, I’ve recently, proudly reached the status that artists, managers and everyone who knows what I do, come to me with suggestions. Of course, whenever I run out of inspiration, those suggestions are what I turn to. So, this week someone at the office actually slipped me a pink little sticky note with just a name on it and the mysterious instruction to check this guy out on YouTube.His name is William Singe. This Australian 24 year old kicked off his career at the Australian X Factor four years ago. With a perfect audition, in which he added a self-written rap to Justin Bieber’s “One Less Lonely Girl”, he won the heart of Australia. X Factor led to him being put in a boyband called The Collective, who called it quits in 2015.A year earlier, William had started posting up YouTube videos of him doing cover songs. But they are covers unlike any other. William would completely rework the songs to make them his own and this caused millions of people around the world to take a peek.The covers are mainly of R&B songs, and because he’s no stranger to rap, he’ll also take on the songs from the world’s greatest rappers. All the videos start off showing him playing the instruments, before jumping to the shot of him laying down the lead vocal track.Within seconds of watching the videos, you do get sucked in to keep listening. His wide vocal range give him enough room to maneuver in, which makes most of his covers get an exciting twist. Unfortunately, on YouTube, you have to be satisfied with just a little teaser of the song. You see, William is smart and will direct you to iTunes (where he will be paid more) for you to download the full track or, if you must stream, to Spotify, on which he has reached number one.Perhaps this smart move is why he’s not signing to a major record label, because he’s doing it all on his own, including a world tour that’s been getting great reviews. I’m actually sad to see I’ve missed him, because he did 3 gigs in Amsterdam two months ago. Not that I had any chance to get tickets, because the shows were all sold out. This means great things are to come next for William Singe.
