“I don’t remember exactly what she said, but she was berating.” was not very happy that he hadn’t watched it because she thought that it was important for him to guide his career based on what Justin was doing,” says Chance’s mother, Lisa. “I just remember hearing on the other side of the phone, just yelling beratement: ‘What type of mother are you? Do you realize that I went out of my way to get this for you, and he can’t sit down and watch it?’” She wanted Chance to watch it, but Chance says he was exhausted from touring and didn’t make viewing it a top priority.ĭeGeneres then called Chance’s mom. On another occasion, Chance had performed in Cleveland, the third of five consecutive stops opening for Miranda Cosgrove on tour, and DeGeneres, back in L.A., had gotten an advance copy of Justin Bieber’s Never Say Never documentary. “If she had an opinion of any sort, the whole thing changed,” he says. She didn’t like what she saw, he says, and made him and his team redo the entire thing. “That was horrible.” There was one time, he says, DeGeneres was sent a video of a scheduled performance for a different network. “My whole week, my whole month, my whole year could change one text message from her,” explains Chance. Chance says she was like a “hidden eye” over his career. It was her chance, as Variety put it, at “out-Bieb-ing the Bieber,” the biggest teen pop star at the time.Īs Chance’s career intensified, so, too, did his bristling against DeGeneres’ control. And inspired by his prodigious talent, she co-created eleveneleven, a record label that was distributed by Interscope Geffen A&M Records, and signed him as her first act. The viral “Paparazzi” kid was the perfect start.Īfter interviewing Chance on her show in May 2010, DeGeneres gifted the singer $10,000 and a new piano. She had recently started a judging gig on American Idol and branched out into a previously unexplored entertainment avenue: the music business. We’re going to do this together.”īy the time Chance got on Ellen the day after his arrival in L.A., the celebrated TV host who preached about kindness had already conquered daytime television, hitting all-time highs in her show’s ratings. “I remember her pulling my mom aside and saying, ‘You’re never going to have to work again a day in your life.’” To Chance, he recalls, she’d say, “I’m going to protect you. “We were so unsure of what we were getting into, and the person that helped cure all of that skepticism and chaotic energy was Ellen.”Ĭhance took his first-ever plane ride to appear on The Ellen Show, where he says DeGeneres presented herself as a guardian and a mentor to Chance and his mother. “We just couldn’t believe what was happening,” Chance says. It took about a week after the video was posted online for Chance’s mom to receive a call from Los Angeles: Ellen DeGeneres wanted her son on the show the next day. The boy could never have imagined that that local performance would change his life. A shaky videographer captured a then-12-year-old Greyson Chance performing Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi” in front of his schoolmates in early 2010, marking the first time that Greyson sang in front of a crowd. The piano chords rang loudly as a sixth-grader’s prepubescent voice echoed in the Oklahoma middle school gym. “I’ve never met someone more manipulative, more self-centered, and more blatantly opportunistic than her,” he says. Speaking to Rolling Stone last month, Chance wants to get something off his chest: the trauma he says he felt as a teenager after being discovered and later “completely abandoned” by Ellen DeGeneres. “I’m barely holding on by a thread.” It’s the only visual he’s dropping for Palladium, his recently released new album. “I figured we could start with this,” Chance says, cueing up the emotional video for his latest single, “ My Dying Spirit.” “I’m barely on my feet, mama,” he sings over haunting piano. “‘Give me more cunt!’” Chance remembers, with a chuckle, hearing from McLaughlin’s studio.)īut today, the room is still, filled only with the palpable nervous energy of a musician unsure of how to start a conversation he’s been wanting to have for more than five years. ( RuPaul’s Drag Race’s Ginger Minj was recording a song here the other day. The place is typically filled with the boisterous energy of the artists McLaughlin works with. The quaint spot is where Chance - the 25-year-old musician who got his start on The Ellen Show as a tween - stays when he visits L.A. Greyson Chance and I are sitting in the Hollywood Hills home of producer Brett McLaughlin on a warm August morning. ‘This is the first time I’ve been honest about her, and this is the last time I want to talk about it.”
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