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From Chicago Pride — Last Tuesday, Chicago native Steve Grand launched his first original single, a country song titled "All-American Boy", that has now received over 1 million views on YouTube in the past week. When ChicagoPride.com first reported on Grand last Thursday he was relatively unknown, since the openly-gay country singer has appeared on Good Morning America, been featured by a number publications - including a story by the Associated Press - and now has an entire online fan base known as #GrandFans. "It's not about being gay, it's about that longing for someone," Grand told GMA of the video, which was directed and edited by award-winning Chicago filmmaker Jason Knade. To create the video, Grand enlisted his friends and put himself into $7,000 credit card debt. "I funded the song myself," he said, "because I was so obsessed about telling this story." His Story Grand also talked about his struggle with self and family acceptance growing up, which included being enrolled in straight therapy. He has since gained the support of his parents. In the country-rock ballad, Grand's lyrics describe an unrequited love. The chorus, which tied into the holiday week release goes, "be my All-American boy tonight where everyday's the 4th of July." Time to Be Brave On the day the music video was posted on YouTube, the artist wrote via social networking, "time to be brave. the world does not see change until it sees honesty. I am taking a risk here in many ways, but really there is no choice but to be brave. To not tell this story is to let my soul die. It is all I believe in." "I'm ready to be me," he wrote.	Upon uploading the video that July 2nd, the singer formerly known as Steve Starchild, who performed cover songs in local music venues, began using his own name, Steve Grand. Local, down home vibe The friendly and charismatic 23-year old from Lemont, Illinois is a church accompanist and spends his weekends as singer/keyboard performer at the Joynt, a downtown Chicago live music and piano bar. Near the beginning of the performance at the Joynt this past Saturday evening, where he played "All-American Boy" and a number of hit covers from Elton John, Lady Gaga, Neil Diamond and One Direction, he told the audience that "he hadn't slept all week." Before his live performance, Grand told ChicagoPride.com that the last week has been overwhelming and that he has been touched by all the stories people have been sharing with him and how they have been impacted by the video. According to Grand, he's not used to seeing so many eyes looking back at him during his past gigs at the piano bar. "You guys are changing the world," he told spectators. Media criticism Not all gay media is praising the video, however. In the article "Gay Country Singer: Gay Men Are Sad, Predatory Drunks?" on the Bilerico Project, columnist Mark King wrote, "Gay men drink too much, feel sorry for themselves, and come on to straight dudes when their girlfriends aren't around: that's the message from the music video of newly-minted gay country singer Steve Grand. And gay media is too busy fawning over the young stud to notice." King continued, "Aside from the fact that gay men are routinely beaten for the kind of actions Grand takes in his video, perhaps he might consider focusing his risk-taking on something truly perilous: the gay dating pool. You know, with actual gay men. That's a shark tank that takes real survival skills."
Taylor joins Shay in having appeared in a country music music video. Makes you just so proud that our great fratmen are moving up in the world with their dreams! Thanks for the tip, Steve!
“All American Boy”: Steve Grand’s, Unrequited Love, Gay-Themed Country Song Takes America by Storm as It Goes Viral on YouTube
From International Business Times - His story was your story. It was a story of an unrequited love that resonated across sexuality. Steve Grand’s gay-themed, country song, “All-American Boy” has exploded on YouTube as it tells his story and everyone else’s. “Your story is my story,” Grand was told by hundreds of new-found fans who have heard and watched his first song. Like Rebecca Black and Omar Borkan Al Gala, Steve Grand has become an Internet sensation overnight since his country music, “All-American Boy” has become a hit on YouTube. All of them were unknown until people heard of their work and what they contribute to the entertainment industry. But unlike Rebecca and Omar, Steve has beginnings, no typical story of an artist. If Rebecca had an agency to help her produce the hit song “Friday” Steve had to max out his only credit card to create the country song that changed his life and has made an impact to hundreds of others. “All-American Boy” tells a story about a young gay man who had suffered the misfortune of falling in love with an “all-American” straight male friend. Their love began when he hang out with him and his female friend. The video showed the female friend driving the car while he and the straight American friend were sitting comfortably at the back of the car. Too comfortable his friend even slept on his shoulders during the drive. They ended up in the woods and finally to a small body of water. Annoyed with what she sees and feeling more like a third wheel, the girl was seen in the video, driving off, leaving the two behind. The two men felt no remorse making the female friend seemed like out of place. The main character of the story had his moment as he went skinny-dipping with the straight male friend. They even shared a quick kiss. While he realised in the end that it was all for fun for the straight guy, the gay man was left wanting for more and longing for the great feeling he just had with the “all-American” straight guy. It turned out he was not alone with these feelings. And hundreds of thousands more feel the same way. A look at the video revealed that just after more than one week his first work that cost him $$7,000 to produce, has been viewed by 1,165,169 who feel the same like he felt for the American-boy. And after he maxed out his credit card for his first music video, Steve has no regrets. He may be pennyless for now, but the love and express of support and admiration felt from viewers and their comments has just made him the richest man, noting, "I would die a happy man today." His story has been a hit because it tells what everyone can relate to. It’s his story and your story. "I was a 13-year-old boy (at camp)," the 23-year-old singer-songwriter, said in a phone interview with Huffington Post. "One of my counselors was warm and strong and he took an interest in me — not sexually, but as a friend, and it really moved me. I remember leaving with a horrible ache in my heart." He never thought, his music will have this effect on people. And he himself was surprised on how it moved him. "I'm not a crier," said Grand. "But since this all began, since people have been reaching out, I've been beyond moved, because so many people have felt what I felt, been through what I've been through." "Like I said, I would die a happy man today," Grand continued, according to The Huffington Post. "And it's the first time in my entire life I can say that."
The Story Behind Gay Singer Steve Grand's "All-American Boy"
From DIY Theme - Steve Grand has barely slept in days. He hasn’t showered. He’s lost weight. His family is worried that he isn’t getting enough to eat. It’s the 4th of July, and two days ago, the 23-year-old singer and Chicago native released his first music video, an independently produced pop-country love song, “All-American Boy,” about one gay man’s unrequited love for a straight man. The story, based on Grand’s own experiences as an out gay man, was relatively innocent. But as the video uploaded to YouTube, he tells BuzzFeed, he obsessed over how the world — especially his church, where he works as a wedding and funeral singer — might respond to its same-sex content. “I had no idea what people were gonna think,” Grand says. “I had no idea how people were gonna respond. I couldn’t sleep.” The video wasn’t necessarily Grand’s coming out. He’d done that officially years earlier, but doing this was a terrifying act of vulnerability. “It’s me coming out as totally myself and just standing naked before the world,” he says. Despite the risk and fear, Grand says it was something he felt compelled to do. “I think that we’re at a time now where there’s no room to be anything but totally honest and totally who you are,” he says. “I decided this is who I’m gonna be to the world. Just my true, raw self. I’m putting it all out there.” Within hours, the video racked up tens of thousands of views and hundreds of supportive comments from both gay and straight viewers who identified with the singer’s heartache. “I’m still in awe,” says Grand. “I’m not a crier, but the comments have been so overwhelmingly positive. They’re thanking me for telling my story because they feel like it’s a story that hasn’t been told before. And that’s all I could ever hope for.” Grand started working on music when he was just 12 years old as a way to cope with his own struggles. The singer says he fell for a male counselor who took a particular interest in him at camp when he was 13, and was heartbroken when they eventually separated. “That’s actually what made me realize I was gay,” he says. “That deep longing, that achy feel, for someone that’s just out of reach, someone that you’ll never have. I remember driving away from camp after I said good-bye, and I felt the deepest ache of my life. I felt that was the end of my childhood.” Then, when his parents discovered an incriminating AOL instant message, he was sent to ex-gay therapy to talk to counselors about his sexuality. “That was pretty much my high school experience,” he says. “My parents became really obsessive about making sure I didn’t go out because they were so scared of me acting out on my unwanted same-sex attraction, as it was referred to.” So he turned to music. “I was quite eccentric,” he says. “And that eccentricity comes from being broken, in the ways that we’re all broken.” That’s why the release of “All-American Boy,” with its foregrounded same-sex details, was an important risk for Grand. “I needed to do something to share the ache and share the pain that I’ve felt for most of my life,” he says. “This is the story I wanted to tell. This is who I want to be. I owe that. I owe that to all the people who have felt this.” Grand rushed to have the video produced in just a couple of months, pulling together friends and acquaintances to lend a hand with the production when money fell short. “I sacrificed a lot of things, financially, to make it happen,” he says, “but this is what I had to do. This is all I could have done.” Grand’s friends and advisers suggested masking gender pronouns to appeal to a wider audience, but he insisted on staying true to his own story. “I’m sending a message to people,” he says. “The power of music transcends. The gender pronouns are just a little side part.” “My sexuality hasn’t been a secret for a long time,” he says. “It’s something that’s not really talked about in my family, so this is kinda like a big move. Me and my mother have shed a lot of tears over it. It’s one thing to say ‘I’m gay,’ but to see it and to see that kiss and to see it all up on screen, it’s something the world is gonna see.” But his family and friends have been overwhelmingly supportive throughout the process of making his video. “[My mother’s] proud of me, and she’s been looking at the comments and she’s so touched and she’s so moved,” he says. “She’s come such a long way.” He’s still waiting to see how his church, where he sings, will respond. “I’m not sure what’s gonna happen now that this is all out in the open. That was just another sacrifice I had to make because that was a big chunk of my income.” Whatever the outcome, he’s committed to this path. “I couldn’t live with myself if I wasn’t true and honest,” he says. “That’s what people deserve. People don’t deserve a lie. We have a whole new generation that’s counting on us to be brave and to not be afraid of pigeonholing ourselves. People need to be brave for the world to change. If it puts me in a hole, I’ll accept that. But I did what I needed to do.” Grand says that the story of “All-American Boy” is ultimately meant to appeal to everybody. “It really is a human story,” he says. “It’s a universal story of longing. An ‘all-American boy,’ it doesn’t mean ‘American,’ it doesn’t mean ‘boy,’ it just means that person that you love, and that you idealize, and that person you ache for. There are guys who sing along to Taylor Swift songs, and I don’t understand why they can’t sing along to my song. To me, there’s really no difference. It’s a story about longing.” “All-American Boy” has been viewed over a half million times in less than a week, and it has caught the attention of gay music icons like Lance Bass, who was among the first to tweet the video. Grand has made a meager profit off the attention thus far, but says he’s happy to scrape by if it means he’s creating something that has an effect on people. “I’ve scrubbed toilets, I’ve cleaned up puke and shit off the floor. I worked at a gay bar and had my ass grabbed one too many times and my nipples squeezed,” he laughs. “[But] all that matters to me is that I’m putting out real art into the world.” Grand has no concrete plans for what’s next, though he’s started aligning himself with friends and advisers who can help plan his next artistic endeavor. Whatever it is, it won’t necessarily be country music, but more likely pop-rock. “To be honest, I wasn’t trying to write a country song,” he says. “At the end of the day, people can call it what they want. I’m just gonna keep being honest in my songwriting.” “All I know is that I’ve passed the point of no return,” he said. “There’s no going back now.”