, he soon started learning the guitar, helping him to build up a collection of dozens of cover performances — of songs by everyone from Rich Brian to The Beatles — on his YouTube channel.
Now, six years after his first video, with views topping 1 million per song and an international fanbase, Perez sits at the nexus of two distinct trends.The other is a lockdown-fuelled surge, both in terms of supply and demand, in bedroom-performance videos on YouTube, a consequence of our collective habit right now to trawl digital platforms in search of connection.Perez, who lives with his parents and sister in suburban Sydney, has seen his views steadily increase over the years.
But around the time of the first coronavirus lockdowns, he began taking song requests with a therapeutic quality.By the second video, recorded like the rest of his work on an iPhone using an $80 microphone, he had clocked his first million views."People started to comment and just say … 'this helped my mum, this helped my brother', and I guess because they are home they needed that relaxation," he said.