It’s 10.30am in the western Sydney suburb of St Clair, the sky low and white and muggy. Grant Perez is posing with his car as the Guardian’s photographer snaps away. It’s not uncommon to see rappers and pop idols draping themselves over Lambos and Maseratis, with Calabasas palm trees waving in the background; Perez’s whip is a sticker-plastered four-door Toyota JXZ100 Mark II which he works on in his spare time, often posting videos of himself installing coilovers or lovingly washing it in the driveway of the family home.
Three weeks from now, Perez – better known online and on the charts as grentperez – will be out of the suburbs and on a 36-show North American tour for his new debut full-length album, Backflips in a Restaurant. The 24-year-old has more than 770,000 YouTube subscribers and fans all over the world, after nearly a decade of uploading videos filmed in his bedroom upstairs, singing sweet, soulful covers and his own songs. Backflips is the sleek, confidently understated culmination of that decade – of karaoke sessions with family and friends in the Filipino diaspora, learning his parents’ favourite 70s ballads on guitar, putting melancholy twists on pop hits, effortlessly effective at getting people to click and then stick around for that voice.
“I’m just drawn to the melodies,” he says. “Music from the 70s has such lovely melodies. Bread, the Carpenters, you just fall into the music … With bossa nova, you’re just drawn to this feeling, you’re just forced to sway your head.” One of his favourite songs at the moment is Gilbert O’Sullivan’s Alone Again (Naturally), he says, crooning the titular line.
As the shoot wraps, a FedEx truck pulls up and the driver hands Perez an oversized, pink-foiled padded envelope. Inside is a hefty hardcover magazine – the kind with 33 luxury fashion ads before you even get to an article – that he did a shoot for in New York on a recent trip. His mother, Mary, pops out the front door of the house and peers at the shiny package with interest, but without fuss. “When did you do that one?” she asks, absolutely unfazed. She nips back inside and returns to hand me a huge, cold glass of apple juice, then a little wooden tray with red grapes and triangle-cut chicken sandwiches. (Later, halfway through our interview at their kitchen table, her son stops mid-sentence and looks intently at the tray: “I made this in high school, I just realised.”)
While this is the first time he has done an interview at the family home, Perez has been virtually inviting people in since he posted his first YouTube video aged 13. Sort his 463 (at the time of writing) videos from oldest to newest, and you can track his growth from a slightly shy kid doing Musiq Soulchild covers with his older sister, his voice reedy but already showing off a beautiful warm timbre, to an earnest boy next door serenading the camera with weapons-grade melisma.
Perez sprinkled his own compositions in among the covers, which include Filipino hits and some classics including the Carpenters’ Yesterday Once More and Bread’s 1973 single Aubrey – although it is his takes on gen Z pop and coffeehouse croonercore that really rack up the views: Billie Eilish, Bruno Major, Norah Jones, Harry Styles, Daniel Caesar, Rex Orange County. (The latter got in touch after seeing one of Perez’s covers and invited him to open all the dates on his Australia and New Zealand tour in 2023.)
“If I were to view my career from the start – if I didn’t go through YouTube, I don’t know what I would do. Maybe just kept doing competitions?” he wonders. He began testing the waters in 2019, entering two local singing competitions and winning both. “I’ve got one here, actually,” he says, pulling an A4 card from a shelf over the fridge emblazoned with GRAND FINAL WINNER! CONGRATULATIONS! The reverse has a judge’s handwritten feedback taped to it: “Melisma/riffing is gorgeous … great connection with the audience … beautiful storytelling … very intelligent mature performance. Try to release a bit more in the top of the voice.”
Perez briefly studied industrial design before dropping out in 2020 to focus on music; if he was just going to be sitting at home, he reasoned, he would rather keep recording than pay thousands for an online-only degree during the pandemic. When his views began to tip over from hundreds of thousands to millions, he informed his parents that he had a manager. (“Just make sure it’s legit,” was Mary’s advice.)
He had promised his parents he would give himself two years to make music work, then go back to uni if it didn’t. He only needed one: in 2021 his debut single Cherry Wine racked up 1m YouTube views in six weeks, and went Gold on the Aria charts.
“What could I say about that time?” he says, with the note of guilt that often afflicts those fortunate enough to have found positives during the pandemic. “It was weird, but it was good for me … It was a blessing and a curse in a way.”
The pandemic meant that, apart from performances at school and singing competitions, Perez had almost no live performing experience by the time he was being booked for professional shows: “I’d say the first time I performed as me, where there were community and fans, was Groovin the Moo, funnily enough. I was on at like 10am.” There were maybe 100 people, he estimates – which is no small feat for the first slot of the day, but his “community” is a passionate bunch.
Backflips, much like his earlier EPs and singles, draws on the aesthetics of what used to be called adult contemporary: underscored by bossa nova beats and wide-eyed love stories, sharp edges not so much sanded off as simply surplus to requirements. Who needs edgy, abrasive noise when you have a voice that sounds like a sunbeam through honey? At a grentperez live show, though, the front rows are going off like a bucket of prawns in the sun; they’re thrilled to be there, and their joy and his are equally contagious.
The personal connection he has built with his fans doesn’t have the whiff of parasocial creepiness that often grows in extremely online fandoms; he says he’s still friends with people in the Philippines who were among his earliest fans. What is more complex for him is the line between musician and content creator, which is being blurred by record labels, who are putting pressure on major artists and indies alike to make video content for promo purposes – to emulate the organically viral success of artists such as Perez.
“When I see artists I follow do the TikTok side of things, a part of me dies,” he laughs. “I’m just like, ‘Just keep it underground! If no one listens to it, that’s all right’ … Unless you’re an actual content creator, and you know how the algorithm works for you, it’s hard.” He second-guessed himself constantly about posting silly skits over carefully chosen covers, worried that variety would “confuse” the algorithm: “There was this whole motto in the beginning to upload more content, more often. But I don’t even know if that’s working.”
But he had few qualms about putting himself out there as a performer – and no plans to scrub his older, less polished videos now that he’s hitting the big time.
“I really respect myself for doing that,” he says. “An art teacher in high school told me that people would rip out pages of their visual art process diaries and she’d get really angry at them. She’d say, it’s a process diary for a reason. You want to see all of your steps to get to where you are now. And I used that in a lot of my life. A lot of old YouTube videos that I cringe at now, I just keep up. I think it’s important to remind people that change exists, because a lot of people get complacent – or when you’re unfamiliar with change, you’re a little bit fearful and whatnot. But I think it’s natural.”
grentperez’s album Backflips in a Restaurant is out now through Fast Friends and AWAL.
grentperez’s songs to live by
Each month we ask our headline act to share the songs that have accompanied them through love, life, lust and death.
What was the best year for music, and which albums prove it?
Dang. 2017? Daniel Caesar released Freudian, Rex Orange County released Apricot Princess, Tyler, the Creator with Flower Boy, and Bruno Major’s A Song For Every Moon. I personally just associate them with good memories and good times. I would’ve been in year 10 – times were so silly, all you had to worry about was whose party you’d be invited to.
What music do you clean the house to?
Usually instrumental or Japanese music like Yumi Arai or Ichiko Aoba. You don’t have to think too much when you listen and it just feels so lovely. There’s something about Japanese music that tickles my brain.
What’s the song you wish you wrote?
I Wish by Stevie Wonder. What a track. That bassline, the arrangement, the lyrics – how good. I roughly recall the first times I listened to this; it made me feel a little defeated. “This is music, huh?! I’m never going to be able to make this. It’s too good.”
What is the song you have listened to the most times this year?
何もきかないで (Don’t Ask Me Anything / Nani mo Kikanai De) by Yumi Arai. Once again a Japanese track. I FALL IN LOVE WITH HER VOICE EVERY TIME. So good. Such a good melody.
If your life was a movie, what would the opening credits song be?
Dancing in the Moonlight by Toploader. It is so reminiscent of 2000s romcoms, and my go-to feel good track.
What is the first album you bought?
Mahal by Toro Y Moi
What is the best song to have sex to?
Easily by Bruno Major
