Garden of Daisies

On seeing a Brand New Artist and YouTube

March 9th, 2007

I saw Paolo Nutini live last night. It was awesome, and it really demonstrated (as odd as this may sound) the power of Youtube. See I first heard about Paolo about two months ago when my boyfriend stumbled across this video of his on YouTube…he’d listened to a few songs and said he was brilliant. I’m pretty bad for not actually picking up on trends or things online though…

But then when I was in England my cousin Cath and her husband were telling us all about him, had seen him live, and had his CD. We drove along the coast in East Sussex listening to his music, and I fell madly in love. Then I came home again and I ordered his CD online, and while I waited for it to arrive I played his music over and over on Youtube. And you see it’s not just a few songs people have posted. He has his own page where songs of his are officially posted etc etc.

So anyway, last night, Paolo opened a song by saying, “Hopefully you will hear this on the radio soon. I emphasize ‘hopefully’.” And then he began to sing ‘Last Request’ and we all sang along with him. And when you think about it that’s incredible. He’s from a small town in Scotland. He’s not even on the radio yet, and people know all the words to his songs. That’s a new phenomenon. Because I guarantee not everyone in that building heard about him while they were in England visiting their cousin…people are finding him and falling in love with his stuff over YouTube.

I don’t know a lot about how the music industry used to work. But something tells me this will be an interesting change.

As for his performance: he was wonderful. And it was exciting because this is still new for him…He’d probably never been to Montreal before but he packed out a venue that probably held a few hundred people, and everyone knew all the words to his music…. And while I’m sure having a crowd full of people singing your music to you never gets old, to him it was obviously very new. He would get this gorgeous little smile on his face as if he couldn’t even believe it.

Entry Filed under: Thoughts on other things..., Music